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Unfinished Rainbows 

And Other Essays 



BY 

GEORGE WOOD ANDERSON 



^•r^ 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



^ 






Copyright, 1922, by 
GEORGE WOOD ANDERSON 



Printed in the United States of America 



MI^R 1 5 1922 
©CI.A659146 



•vi..-*? 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Unfinished Rainbows 5 

n. Gathering Sunsets 12 

III. Beyond the Curtained Clouds 19 

IV. Tilling the Sky 26 

V. Unquarried Statues 33 

VI. The Ages to Come 40 

Vn. The Unlocked Door of Truth 47 

VIII. Weaving Sunbeams 54 

IX. The Pathway of a Noble Purpose 61 

X. Swords for Moral Battles 68 

XI. Spiced Wine 75 

Xn. The Fever of Health 82 

Xin. The Wisdom of the Unlearned 89 

XrV. The Strength of Weakness 96 

XV. Crumbling Palaces 103 

XVI. The Echo of Life's Unsung Songs 110 

XVII. Modern Judases 117 

XVin. The Adjustable Universe 125 

XIX. Seeing Love 132 

XX. The Dignity of Labor 139 

XXL Above the Commonplace of Sin 146 

XXII. The Investment of a Life 154 

XXin. Thought Planting 161 

XXIV. The Rosary of Tears 168 

XXV. The Hearthstone of the Heart 175 

XXVI. The Unoared Sea 182 



UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

The rainbow was only a fragment of an arch 
because the needed sunshine was withheld. Had 
the sunlight been permitted to permeate all the 
atmosphere with its golden glow, the arch would 
have spanned the entire heavens. 

This is the reason why, in hours of sorrow, we 
do not grasp the fullness of God's promise; we 
permit the denser clouds of doubt and faithless- 
ness to keep the light of God from shining 
through our griefs; or, with a little faith, we get 
a gleam of light that gives us but a tiny fragment 
of the bow. 

While all the operations of this natural world 
are tokens of God's unfailing thoughtfulness in 
keeping his covenant with man, a great event 
has made the rainbow peculiarly the embodi- 
ment of that thought. Looking from the narrow 
window of the wave-tossed ark, upon the silent 
grandeur of a world slowly arising from the 
waters of an universal flood, Noah beheld the 
rainbow and rejoiced in the blest assurance, 
that, while the things of man are subject to the 
ravages of time and destruction of contending 

5 



6 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

elements, the things of God are always stable 
and secure. The most permanent products of 
man's hand and mind are soon swept away, but 
the things of God endure, and continue faithful, 
in working out their appointed courses. Through 
storm or calm, events march with steady, unceas- 
ing tread, knowing that God's roads are never 
worn, and God's bridges never tremble and fall. 
Above the placid, mysterious world, calmly 
emerging from the muddy, wreck-strewn waters, 
was the peaceful, radiant bow, smiling in con- 
fidence upon him and his companions. The 
world had changed, but the rainbow was just as 
it had always been, stately, serene, and un- 
aff righted. The crumbling, flood- torn earth had 
not weakened its foundations, the drenching 
rains had not faded its colors, the hurrying, 
wind-swept clouds could not disturb it. Though 
it were made out of hurrying light and drifting 
mist it would not be swayed or moved even a 
little. Under its archway walked the guarding 
angels of God. Over the waters came the clear 
voice once heard in Eden, uttering the promise, 
"And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud 
over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the 
cloud: and I will remember my covenant." 

That is a sweeping promise that is literally 
fulfilled in nature. All clouds carry rainbows. 
Most of them are never seen by us because we 



UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 7 

lack the necessary keenness of vision, or the 
proper point of view to behold their woven 
colors; many are only partially seen because 
something intervenes and prevents a perfect 
intersection of heavenly sunlight with our earth- 
born mists; many are within the vision of all 
observing men; but, whether we see it or not, 
for every cloud there is a scarf of red and orange 
and yellow and green and blue and scarlet and 
purple. So, in spiritual matters, we find that for 
every sorrow there are beautiful assurances of 
God's presence and unwavering covenant-keep- 
ing power. If we do not see them it is not God's 
fault, for the light of his faithfulness transfixes 
every cloud that arises above his earth-born 
children. 

There are the clouds of bereavement. The 
Death Angel defied your love-locked doors and 
bolted windows. Heeding neither your cry nor 
your pleadings, he entered your home and 
pushed aside the doctor and attending nurses 
and friends, and touching the heart of your loved 
one, stilled it to sleep. Your grief was such that 
you did not see how you could live. The home 
seemed empty and strangely silent. The entire 
pathway seemed shrouded in the somber 
shadows of your grief. Life was a desolation. 
But you did not give up in despair. There was 
a bow in the cloud. An arch of seven brilliant 



8 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

hues reached from one horizon to another 
horizon, and you knew that the One in whom 
you had placed your trust had proven true. He 
had not forgotten you. Looking at the rainbow, 
the token of his covenant, you read in its 
mingled colors the words of the Lord Jesus, 
"I am the resurrection, and the life: he that 
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die." In your sorrow you found 
that the bow of God's promises never trembles. 
You were facing financial disaster. All your 
investments had proven bad. You had been 
misled by false counsel. The savings of years 
had been swept away by one fell swoop of dis- 
aster, and with them had gone all the fond plans 
for the future of your family and loved ones. 
Your head reeled as you felt the earth giving 
way beneath you; you were about to close your 
eyes in despair, when suddenly, in the darkest 
part of the overshadowing cloud, you saw the 
rainbow. God had not forgotten you. Amid the 
whirl and destruction of things his promises 
never trembled. Its gleaming colors told you 
that you were not alone, and spelled such a 
message of hope and inspiration to your soul, 
that you smiled in the face of adversity. Here 
was the promise, "There is no want to them that 
fear Him." You had never seen the beauty of 



UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 9 

those words before. You felt the thrill of a new 
life and the confidence that you once placed in 
riches, you now centered upon God. 

There were the dark clouds of misplaced 
friendship. You were confident that the one in 
whom you were placing your trust was worthy, 
but through that friendship you were betrayed, 
and misrepresented, and made the object of 
scorn and criticism. No cloud is darker than 
that, no sorrow is harder to bear, and yet you 
did not lose confidence in man. Above the 
feathered edges of the cloud was the rainbow of 
God's promise, and you knew that if even father 
and mother forsook you, the Lord would take 
you up. The rainbow, as the symbol of God's 
promise, said: "Lo, I am with you always, even 
unto the end of the world." 

But some one says, *T have never been able 
to grasp the fullness of these promises. Amid 
life's clouds I cannot see the presence of the 
A,lmighty." That is not God's fault, but because 
one hinders the coming of the light. If you do 
not permit the Spirit of God to shine upon your 
sorrow with its golden light, the ministration of 
the rainbow to your sorrow-smitten soul will 
never be complete. The comforts of God are 
known only by those who are willing to receive 
his holy ministrations. The rainbow is never 
finished for the one who refuses to receive Christ 



10 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

fully and completely into his life. He is the 
Light of the world, and his presence always 
brings the promises of the Father ^o their fullest 
possible earthly revelation and application. His 
revelations are always complete and as comfort- 
ing as they are beautiful. His clear light of 
goodness has always been making battle against 
the darkness of sin's mists and fogs. He is never 
satisfied until his love has intercepted every 
overshadowing cloud so that when you behold 
the streaming banners of the bow, that always 
follows and never precedes a storm, you may 
know that you, through him, have already 
gotten the victory. Light triumphs. The over- 
shadowing cloud is pierced. Instead of somber- 
ness there is beauty. 

The earthly rainbows will never be complete. 
Here we behold at best only a segment of a 
perfect circle. We have but a one-world view 
and therefore can behold but half the rainbow. 
In heaven we shall see the completed circle, as 
John beheld it in his vision and exclaimed, with 
rapturous delight, "There was a rainbow round 
about the throne." So glorious is the light of the 
great, white throne, and the face, and the 
raiment of Him that sat upon it, that to angelic 
vision it is nestled in the center of a perfectly 
rounded bow of brilliant hue. 

The rainbow can never be destroyed, for the 



UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 11 

light of Christ can never fade. Ever about the 
throne of God, in perfect circle, shall gleam the 
steady, colored token of God's faithfulness 
through all time and all eternity. The multitude 
of white-robed ones that worship before the 
throne are those who have come out "of great 
tribulation," they are those who have "overcome 
through the blood of the Lamb," therefore it is 
fitting that the one choicest treasure saved from 
the natural world in which they fought their 
battles, and won their victories, should be the 
rainbow, the richly colored symbol of God's 
faithfulness and mercy. What emotions thrill 
our souls in this world when we look upon the 
rainbow! What memories shall sweep through 
our souls when we behold the rainbow that is 
ever round about the great white throne of 
God! 



II 

GATHERING SUNSETS 

The sunset is the sheaf of the day's activities, 
wherein are bound all the roses and poppies and 
fruits and grains of the passing hours, for the 
experiences of life are constantly coming to full 
harvest. Weary with toil and worn with watch- 
ing, we do not see the riches of to-day; or, 
stirred by some new ambition, our eyes become 
so fixed upon the future, that to-day's golden 
grain is trampled under foot and lost. Instead 
of facing the. morrow's morn, rich with garnered 
treasures, we greet it with empty hands. We are 
not householders seeking strong-walled dwell- 
ings and broad, extending acres, but are careless, 
nomadic folk, wandering aimlessly from day to 
day, as gypsies wander from town to town. 
Having all things within our grasp, we possess 
nothing. When touched by the hand of Death, 
and taken out of life, the world is no more 
disturbed than by the bursting of a bubble on 
the ocean wave. 

Sunsets are sheaves, and the brilliancy of their 
coloring is God's way of calling our attention 
to their value. The waving of so many golden 

12 



GATHERING SUNSETS 18 

and scarlet banners, by a myriad of unseen 
hands, should awaken the most careless soul to 
the consciousness that something mighty is 
transpiring. Such banners and pageantry pass- 
ing through our streets would awaken the entire 
city to wonderment and concern. For what king 
are the banners waving.^^ For what worthy cause 
are all these ensigns thrown upon the wind.^ 
What victory is celebrated here? Yet the sun- 
sets pass unheeded, and the golden sheaf of 
another day is trampled under careless feet, and 
left to mildew and decay. 

The art of gathering sunsets, the grasping of 
each day's experiences with firm and constant 
hold, is one to covet. Days are not something to 
"pass through." Each day is like unto an acre 
of land, through which one may hurry, as in a 
train, without thought of right or ownership; or 
unto an acre of land which he holds in perpetual 
ownership, adding that much to his estate, and 
increasing his income through all the days that 
follow. Rather, it is a sheaf of grain, supplying 
food and affording strength for an ever-increas- 
ing work which he may throw away, or keep for 
future use. Sunset time is harvest time, and the 
evening hour is the one in which to fill full the 
granaries and treasure chests for days unborn. 
Sunsets should be bound with the golden cords 
of memory and kept forever. 



14 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

The pathway of life grows brightest for those 
who have wasted fewest of their yesterdays. 
Hours well spent and safely garnered never lose 
the brightness of their sunshine. It always 
glows in the sparkle of the eye, in the brightness 
of a winning smile, in the warm atmosphere of 
helpfulness with which they are surrounded. 
Hours spent in sin and dissipation have no luster 
to cast upon the afterdays, but goodness is 
always luminous. Hours of right-living may be 
likened to blazing suns that never cease to glow. 
The ability to retain their brightness means an 
ever-increasing splendor of life. It is this that 
the inspired writer must have had in mind when 
he wrote that the pathway of the just is as a 
shining light, that shineth more and more unto 
the perfect day. 

The secret of perfection along any line of 
endeavor is the gathering in and retaining the 
good, at the same time sorting out and per- 
manently eliminating that which is bad. It is a 
work of patience and progression. It requires 
the fruitage of many days, the garnered glories 
of many sunsets, to endow one with the riches of 
genius; and not one single day should be lost. 
The lapidist, whose magic touch changes pebbles 
into glittering jewels to adorn the neck of 
beauty; the sculptor, whose mallet-stroke is so 
accm'ate that rough, ill-shapen stones become 



GATHERING SUNSETS 15 

forms of grace to inspire the generations; the 
artist, whose brush quickens the common dust 
and clay into marvelous paintings of unfading 
color and undying sentiment; the botanist, 
whose carefulness transforms barren waysides 
into gardens, and the desert places into banquet- 
ing halls; the metallurgist, whose powerful hand 
takes the knotted lumps of ore and fashions 
them into the bronze doors of a great cathedral 
— all these represent that priceless frugality that 
will not permit a sunset to escape. Their first 
crude efforts were sheaves of rich experiences, 
which they garnered and stored away in the 
treasure chests of memory. They had the bright 
light of their first sunsets to add to the morning 
light of their second endeavors. They continued 
to store the brightness of the passing expe- 
riences. Day by day the light grew brighter, 
until at last there came the perfect day, when 
the whole world stood amazed at the perfection 
of their handiwork. The loss of one sunset 
would have faded the light and dimmed the 
glory of their final achievement. All perfect art 
is but gathered sunsets. 

This law holds in the matter of spiritual per- 
fection. God does much for us at conversion, 
when, through faith in him, we are changed by 
his grace into new men and new women. It is 
like a lost planet finding its central sun, and re- 



16 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

suming its accustomed place, and finding light, 
and warmth, and life, and joy again. Wonderful 
indeed is the power of God as manifested in the 
conversion of any individual, but conversion is 
not perfection. Perfection is something that the 
inspired writer urges us "to go unto." "And 
beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith 
virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowl- 
edge temperance; and to temperance patience; 
and to patience godliness; and to godliness 
brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness 
charity." 

Do not permit the colors of triumph to fade 
from your first day's sky. Hold on to that sun- 
set. Each day will furnish its added beam of 
light. Faith, hope, and love, and all the Chris- 
tian graces will become more beautiful for you, 
to you, and in you. The pathway will become 
brighter and brighter. Life will have fewer 
shadows because the light falls upon you from 
so many angles and becomes more perfectly dif- 
fused. To-morrow can have no hindering un- 
certainties, for the light of the past experiences 
illumines the future. There is light for every 
darkened comer, and one may rejoice that all 
things are working together for good, because we 
do love God. Gathered sunsets make life's trail 
ablaze with light. 

Let no to-day become yesterday, except in the 



GATHERING SUNSETS 17 

calendar, as we reckon time. Each day must 
become part of us as we live in an ever-present 
now. The same alphabet we learned in child- 
hood is ours to-day. Because we did not forget 
it with the setting of the sun, it served us to-day 
as we spell out, in polysyllables, a newly dis- 
covered truth. The alphabet did not fade with 
the death of the day we learned it, so that it is 
now part of our lives. As we cannot think apart 
from the words we learned long ago; and as we 
cannot calculate, save as we use the first-learned 
characters from one to ten; so, in the developing 
of the soul, we must not lose one single hour of 
prayer or inspiration of a noble purpose. 

Both building and growing are alike in this — 
they are processes of "adding to." Brick added 
to brick and timber added to timber means a 
stately building. Cell added to cell means 
growth of body and increase in stature. But 
handling brick is not enough, they must be 
placed with a purpose and kept firmly fixed in 
the place desired. The brick of yesterday must 
be where it can have added to it the brick of 
to-day. Physical growth depends upon the keep- 
ing the cells of yesterday for a foundation upon 
which to build the cells of to-day. Christian 
living is similar. We build a character and grow 
a soul but the process is the same, with both 
character and soul. We gain by adding to. 



18 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

Therefore we must not permit any of our sunsets 
to fade away. All that we have gained through 
prayer and Christian service must be held to 
brighten each new morn. The spiritual victory 
over temptation, the answer to our intercessory 
prayers, the moment of spiritual illumination as 
we read the Bible, all these are priceless expe- 
riences upon which to add the newer conquests 
of to-day. We must not permit the disease of 
sin to sap our vitality and destroy the growth 
of yesterday. We must guard our spiritual 
health that we may grow. This is what Christ 
meant when he said: "Men ought always to 
pray." The culture of the soul is an eternal 
process. Days must not pass; they must remain 
as part of our own selves. 



Ill 

BEYOND THE CURTAINED CLOUDS 

One of the rarest treasures of the May time 
is the richness and purity of the sky. The winter 
wraps the heavens in robes of somber hue as 
though in mourning for the summer dead; but 
at the coming of the first white cloud, and sound 
of first lark's song, the sky seems to melt in 
tenderness, and assume the softest, richest hue 
of blue. As far as the eye can reach there is 
nothing but blue — soft, rich, warm, tender, 
melting, soul-entrancing blue. Blue, as clear as 
an unshadowed midland lake. Blue as a translu- 
cent sapphire without a flaw to disturb its 
gleaming surface. A great arch of caressing 
tenderness through which the white-flecked 
clouds ride in state, as they sail majestically 
from one port of mystery to another port of 
mystery. Among the richest treasures of the 
spring must be mentioned the deepening of the 
blue and the hanging of the snow-white curtains 
of the clouds. 

But life's horizon is ever draped with rich 
folds of white and blue, that hang like silken 
curtains, to hide, with tantalizing secrecy, the 

19 



20 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

mysteries that lie beyond. Day by day the 
curtains hide their treasure-chests of mystery, 
tempting us to strike tents and journey toward 
them. With the eagerness with which little chil- 
dren watch the unwrapping of a Christmas 
package we watch the moving of these clouds, 
trusting that each new shifting of the curtains 
will make the coveted revelation, but as we 
journey on they still evade us. 

Conservative people, ones who never startle 
themselves or their friends by doing anything 
new, not that they are averse to doing anything 
new but simply because they are not mentally 
capable of entertaining new ideas, say that the 
mysteries that lie behind the curtained clouds 
are childish fancies and youth's illusions; and 
that energy expended in reaching the buried 
treasure at the rainbow's end were as fruitful an 
enterprise. Those of us who have endeavored to 
solve these mysteries know better, for we have 
found that the curtained clouds that hide, are 
the ones that, like banners, guide us to the 
things we really need. 

Man must not be unmindful of the ministry of 
mystery. Over against everything enigmatic 
God has given man an insatiable desire to find 
out the hidden meaning. Yielding to that 
divinely implanted impulse develops powers 
that otherwise would atrophy. Behold the 



BEYOND THE CURTAINED CLOUDS 21 

benefits of these endeavors as they lifted the 
human race out of stagnation and taught it the 
way of progress. Tented in the low swamp- 
lands, eating roots and bark, man saw these 
curtains that suggested to his hunger-pinched 
body the thought of a banqueting-hall where 
he might feed. His quest never brought him to 
the ladened tables of his desire, but as he 
journeyed he foimd grain and fruits and nuts 
and berries, substantial food for a full twelve- 
month. Dwelling amid the sick and dying, man 
saw the moving of the curtains that God hangs 
along our sky-line, and felt that, somewhere, 
beyond their folds, must exist a spring, whose 
living waters would not only heal the sick but ^f^ 

give the drinker perpetual youth. The spring ' 

was never found, but as man journeyed west- 
ward in the quest he found a land whose liberties 
and institutions crowd a century of blessings 
into every decade. Toiling with small recom- 
pense, like some dull beast of burden, man saw 
the clouds that suggested a palace of ease and 
luxury. He failed to find the palace of his 
dreams, but on the way he discovered labor- 
saving machinery that has made his labor a 
delight, and given to every laborer a home sur- 
passing in comforts the baron's stately castle. 

Because of the ministry of mystery he has 
been able to discover the depth and values of his 



V 



^2 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

own soul. In his effort to reach the curtained 
clouds man has had to rally his forces, and, to 
meet arising exigencies, he has been compelled 
to draw upon the resources of his nature, until 
he startled himself with his newly discovered 
possibilities and powers. He trained his body to 
wrestle against physical odds; he trained his 
mind to master the handicaps of ignorance; he 
found the glittering sword of courage with which 
to destroy defeating fear; he learned the value 
of faith and hope with which to enrich the soul 
when disaster would impoverish. Without the 
effort aroused by the cloudy curtains of mystery, 
he could not have found himself, and perfected 
his work of invention, art and letters. 

The cloud curtains are also the temple cur- 
tains beyond which men are ever seeking God. 
As the pillared cloud led Israel victoriously 
through troubled waters and desert sands, so the 
mysteries of life and death, and the natural 
world in which we live, have led the human 
mind to religious contemplation. Man found 
himself entangled in the maze of sin, helplessly 
confused amid the ways that wound about, and 
crossed, and led to still more hopeless entangle- 
ments. Despair pointed to the narrow, tangled 
ways and said, "There is nothing better." Look- 
ing upward, the distant clouds spoke of a larger 
world and greater freedom, and beckoned man 



BEYOND THE CURTAINED CLOUDS 23 

to try again. By faith he was saved. To a 
thoughtful, reverent man, all nature reveals and 
conceals the One who brought it into existence. 
An awakened soul will never be satisfied until he 
finds God. He longs to see the Hand that parts 
the curtains and hurls the lightnings. He yearns 
to see the Face whose smile fills the sky with 
sunlight, and transfigures the cloudy curtains, 
until they become the portals of the heavenly 
temple. While mystery is not the mother of 
religion, it is, and ever has been, an important 
part of the Christian faith. "It is the glory of 
God to conceal a thing," says King Solomon. 
He might have added, "It is the glory of man to 
search until he find it." 

It was from behind the curtained clouds that 
God spoke, introducing Jesus as the world's 
Redeemer, saying, "This is my beloved Son, 
hear ye him." It was an overhanging canopy of 
cloud that curtained the disciples on the Mount 
of Transfiguration, and it was in this curtained 
tabernacle that they beheld the glory of their 
Lord. To hide the shame of those who crucified 
His Son, God hung a curtain of cloud about the 
sun, enveloping Calvary in the shades of night. 
It was a curtain of cloud that hid the ascending 
Lord from the sight of the wondering, aston- 
ished, fear-filled disciples. It was from amid 
their soft drapery that the angels spoke of his 



^4 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

coming again, and it is upon the clouds that the 
Son of man shall come in his glory to judge the 
nations. From the glory of the Patmos vision, 
John exclaimed, "Behold he cometh with 
clouds; and every eye shall see him!" To the 
very end Christ is surrounded with the curtained 
clouds of mystery. "And I looked, and behold 
a, white cloud, and upon the cloud One sat like 
unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden 
crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. And he 
that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the 
earth, and the earth was reaped." 

Mystery has a large part in the Christian 
faith, not to discourage, but to encourage the 
prayerful, aspiring souls of men. The drapery of 
cloud hangs all about, not to defeat, but to 
challenge. It is no illusion like a great desert 
distance filled with the blue of emptiness, that 
strews the sands with the bones of those whom 
it deceives, but is as real as the curtains of the 
ancient tabernacle that held the symbol of Je- 
hovah's presence. Life's mysteries are often 
most tantalizing; its problems artfully made 
difficult of solution; but always within their 
depths is God. 

To-day, for our development, it is the glory 
of God to conceal a matter, but it is the promise 
that some day we shall see, not through the mists 
darkly, but face to face with God. Some day we 



BEYOND THE CURTAINED CLOUDS 25 

shall pass beyond the cloudy portals, and the 
vision of God and our own immortality shall lie 
before our enraptured vision. The puzzle of life 
shall there find perfect solution. The equation 
in which life is now the unknown quantity shall 
find its answer. In that cloudless land we shall 
know even as we are known. The shadows of 
death are the last shadow the soul of the 
righteous shall ever see. Until that glad day 
comes, let us fit ourselves, through prayer and 
goodness, to receive such revelations of the 
mystery of godliness as God may care to reveal 
as he parts the curtains of our life's horizon, 
knowing that we journey to a perfect, unclouded 
day. 



IV 

TILLING THE SKY 

Man, that must till the soil for the building 
of his body, must also till the sky for the growing 
of his soul. This was the thought of a little 
woman among the Ozarks, who had given a long 
and beautiful life in training her people of the 
hills. It was Commencement Day in the college 
she had founded. Gathered about her were the 
young men and young women from the humble 
homes of those rugged hills. They were now 
leaving her sheltering care to "commence" life. 
She was such a tiny bit of woman, but through 
the lens of tears in those students' eyes, she was 
greater and more stately than any queen. Her 
eyes gleamed with a love-lighted moisture, her 
lips trembled with great emotions as she rose to 
offer her last words of counsel. She knew that 
very soon they would be beyond the reach of her 
voice, and her desire was to write just one more 
message upon the pages of their memories, a 
message that should never be erased. Breath- 
lessly we awaited her words, which were these: 
"My children, whatever you do, or wherever 
you go, this one task I place before you. Con- 

26 



TILLING THE SKY 27 

tinue your study of astronomy, for there is 
nothing that so uplifts and widens one's life as a 
study of the sky." 

These were not the words of a mere dreamer, 
but of a very practical woman, and were words 
of wisdom uttered to young men and young 
women who were practical students, yearning to 
make their lives count. These students were 
trained observers who would travel that they 
might see things as they are; they were scholars 
who would study in order to make discoveries. 
They were to enter the strain and struggle of 
competition. They were to match their brawn 
and brain against honest rivalry and unscrupu- 
lous dishonesty. They were not entering para- 
dise, yet, amid it all, the one who yearned most 
for their unmeasured success and honor, urged 
them to cast their plowshare deep into the wide 
expanse of overarching blue, whose owner is God, 
but whose harvests belong to the reaper. 

The little woman was very practical, for a 
man must not permit the narrowing influences of 
earthly endeavor to cramp and destroy the soul. 
This is the tendency of most of our daily duties, 
even those of the most fascinating and absorbing 
scientific character. A man may follow the foot- 
steps of Luther Burbank and devote his life to 
the study of plants, and through his magic touch, 
may bring beauty of form and richness of flavor 



28 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

to bud and blossom, vegetable and fruit, and yet 
the very fascination of the work may bind him 
into a narrow world of just buds and blossoms, 
vegetables and fruits. He may, like Edison or 
Steinmetz, choose the fairyland of electricity; 
or, like Madame Cure, enter the enchanted realm 
of radio-activity; or, like Morse and Bell and 
Davenport, become wizards in the world of 
invention, and find a joy that is as perilous as it 
is unutterable. Any realm of nature or inven- 
tion, absorbs and fascinates as clover blossoms 
claim the bee. He who studies will find that a 
lifetime is too short to fathom the unmeasured 
depths of an atom or explore the mysteries of one 
drop of dew. 

But the very fascination of these things is 
their peril, for the tendency of any line of en- 
deavor is to narrow and to restrict one's life. 
One need not yield to this tendency, but the 
chances are that he will. Darwin reports spend- 
ing several delightful years studying fish-worms, 
but while engaged in this absorbing task he lost 
all taste for music. Ericsson had a similar expe- 
rience. Planning, with steel armor, to remake 
the navies of the world, he refused his soul all 
sound of blended tones, endeavoring to feed his 
whole nature on armor plate. It was not until 
Ole Bull, against Ericsson's desire, entered his 
factory, and began playing his violin, that the 



TILLING THE SKY 29 

great inventor became a weeping, willing cap- 
tive, kneeling at the shrine of music, tearfully 
confessing that he had then found that which he 
had lost, and for which his soul had been 
craving. When a man, through the microscope, 
begins a life study of the infinitesimal, he is apt 
to get his own ego into the field of vision and 
magnify himself. On the other hand, consider- 
ing only his own achievements in art or architec- 
ture, one is apt to exaggerate his own importance 
saying, "Is not this great Babylon, which I 
have builded.?" However, when he begins to 
study the stars and comprehend something of 
the vastness of the plan upon which God has 
made the heaven and the earth, he will see his 
own littleness and exclaim with the psalmist, 
"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy 
fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast 
ordained ; what is man ? ' ' 

No earth-made ceiling is high enough for a 
growing brain. Each individual must have a 
God-made sky in which to lift his head and think 
the thoughts of the Almighty. The earthly thing 
upon which we set our affection and which we 
think so essential may mean the wreck and ruin 
of the soul. It is easy to neglect the brain, and 
direct all one's energies toward gaining earthly 
possessions, not for the opportunities afforded 
for benevolence, but that one may dress in style 



30 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

and enjoy a social life, not knowing that it is far 
better to be a great thinker than to be the best 
dressed man in Paris. Poverty may be infinitely 
better than wealth when the individual has a 
familiar sky above his head and a good book in 
his hand. How insignificant are earth's greatest 
obstacles compared with the immensities of 
stellar space ! Nothing can hinder the man who 
is accustomed to measure the distances between 
stars. With his eyes on the distant suns, poverty 
becomes a mole-hill; poor health, but a breath 
of mist; and success is within easy reach. It is 
good for one to till the sky until he learns the 
vastness of his Creator's thoughts. 

One of the richest harvests garnered from the 
sky is a revelation of the accuracy with which 
God works. The stars do not dwell in a land of 
"Hit and Miss," and eclipses are not accidental 
happenings. No ship cuts the waves of the sea 
with half the accuracy as star and planet move 
in their appointed courses. There are no swerv- 
ings nor deviations from the plan of God, so that 
an astronomer can calculate the exact second 
when a comet will return from its long journey 
through unseen realms; as well as foretell the 
conjunction of planets a thousand years from 
now. God has appointed an exact second for the 
rising of the sun, and another exact second for 
its setting, and man knows what both of them 



TILLING THE SKY 81 

are a thousand years before the day arrives. 
Then let us till the sky until we learn that He 
who planned the high-arched blue, and marked 
orbits for stars and planets, is also the Designer 
of our own lives, and has set for us a divine 
purpose somewhat like the vastness of the sky. 
Yielding ourselves to God as the heavenly con- 
stellations yield themselves to their controlling 
powers, each one has a greater life to live, and a 
more sublime destiny to attain, than his fondest 
dreams. How foolish it is to till the soil for 
money, and miss the very essence of life, by 
failing to utilize the sky that yields such tender 
ministries with so little effort! 

It is well to look upward and learn a lesson of 
patience, for the open sky teaches that the plans 
of God are not worked out in a day. The journey 
from star-dust to harvest-ladened planet peo- 
pled by a happy family of contented men, 
requires many millions of years, yet, from the 
beginning it was in the mind of God. He has 
never altered his plan, but with divine accuracy 
the work has passed from stage to stage of 
development with perfect progression. With 
such an example, we must learn patience and 
not become discouraged when we cannot see the 
end from the beginning. A child can make a 
shelf full of mud pies in one summer's afternoon, 
and they will last no longer than the first rain. 



32 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

Hasty work means wasted eflPort. Life that 
endures must be planned of God, fulfilled with 
astronomical accuracy, and most patiently 
developed. 

How wonderful the brain that is molded after 
something of the vastness of the open sky, and 
how thrilling to walk and till the fields of 
heavenly blue! We were meant for those 
heights. It does not require a very great eleva- 
tion in the pure atmosphere of a Western State 
to push back the horizon forty and fifty miles. 
This planet is not the objective of life. It is 
only the hilltop where God has placed us for a 
little while that we may catch a vision as wide 
as the universe and as high as his own White 
Throne. 



UNQUARRIED STATUES 

Michael Angelo, with his statues of David 
and Moses, proved that Phidias and Praxiteles 
had not exhausted the marvelous possibilities of 
the art of sculpture. Rodin, with his "Thinker," 
has shown, while Phidias and Praxiteles demon- 
strated the possibility of giving immortality to 
the unsurpassed beauty of Grecian form, and 
while Michael Angelo revealed the power of 
expressing grace, as in David, and commanding 
leadership, as in Moses, that the achievements 
of these two schools of art were the Pillars of 
Hercules, not marking the limit of art, but the 
open gateway to uncharted seas and undis- 
covered realms in the art of reshaping marble. 
There is not a lofty sentiment of the soul, a 
struggling aspiration toward goodness, or form 
of idealism that cannot be made to live in 
marble, and exert undying influence. There is 
more than "an angel in the block of marble." 
There are all the hopes and fears, joys and 
sorrows, laughter and tears, longings and aspira- 
tions, desires and despairs; there is all that is 
manly, noble, and heroic, lying in any block of 

33 



34. UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

marble awaiting the coming of the liberating 
chisel. What inspiration to the young artist of 
to-day, and what joy to all lovers of the beauti- 
ful! The depths of earth are stored with a 
wealth of unquarried statues. 

The progress of civilization is ofttimes 
hindered because youth, in thinking of statues, 
consider the pedestals upon which they rest 
rather than the depth from which they were 
quarried. They very often do not care to begin 
life at the right place. Because they covet 
praise, and enjoy the warm, congenial atmos- 
phere of appreciation, they shun the depths, 
hours of loneliness, the unrequited toil of 
preparation, and the laborious efforts of be- 
ginning. Modeling clay is an important part of 
the achievement; but getting the proper marble 
is one of the first essentials. 

The experience of Michael Angelo is common 
to all men of real achievement: he found that 
the market place does not offer marble blocks of 
sufficient size for him to work out his divine 
conception. Hucksters and makers of money in 
the market place seldom understand ambitious 
youth that asks for larger blocks than they are 
capable of handling. Their idea of a great 
thought is an ornament for the mantelpiece. But 
men of achievement will not be daunted. Lock- 
ing his studio, Angelo went to superintend the 



UNQUARRIED STATUES 35 

breaking of blocks in the mountain of Carrara, 
and when the sluggish-minded people of the 
mountains refused to do his bidding, he opened 
new quarries in Seravez. Before he could carve 
his statue he knew that he must quarry a block 
of marble sufficiently large. He knew also that 
the block of marble could be had for the digging. 
He found what he needed but did not exhaust 
the treasury. The world still has the material, 
richer than that which made Angelo and Rodin 
famous, awaiting the youth of ambition to 
undertake great things, and the willingness, at 
any cost, to superintend the breaking of the 
marble blocks from the buried storehouses. 

The pleasure of nature is to store her raw 
material in seemingly inaccessible strongholds. 
She does not willingly yield them to men lacking 
vision and great conceptions. If they were of 
easy access, common men would crush them to 
make roads for donkeys to tramp over. Nature's 
treasures are too valuable for ignorance to 
destroy, so she locks them in secret depths or 
inaccessible heights, awaiting the coming of the 
man of genius. If only a man yields himself to 
the divine leadings, and catches a vision of a 
statue like Moses, or a fagade for the Church 
of San Lorenzo, or for a mausoleum for the 
Medici, no mountainside is too steep to chisel 
a roadway through the jagged rocks, no morass 



36 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

so yielding but that a solid highway may be 
erected, no water so troubled but that boats may 
safely transport the precious marble. He will 
not depend upon hirelings nor lean upon bor- 
rowed strength. The dream of beauty must be 
wrought in marble, the unquarried statue must 
be lifted from obscurity and made to live in 
some public place, therefore he wiU personally 
attend to the breaking of the blocks. 

It is not an easy matter to live out a divine 
idea and make it a thing tangible and real for a 
critical world to examine and criticize and after- 
wards love and venerate. Sluggards and lovers 
of ease cannot do it. To them an unquarried 
statue is only a stone. For centuries no one has 
given it any attention; why should they? They 
would rather have something to eat and drink. 
A cushioned chair is far more comfortable to sit 
on, and a potato is much more substantial food. 
What they want is something to eat, and a place 
in which to loimge, and because they do not see 
the value of great ideas they can never be for- 
gotten when dead, for they were never known 
while living. 

He lives who forgets to live and concentrates 
all his powers in bringing to light the vision of 
his beauty-loving soul. It may be the beauty of 
art or the beauty of worthy living; it may be 
the beauty of perfect workmanship in shop or 



UNQUARRIED STATUES 87 

factory, or the beauty of a wholesome influence 
flowing from noble character; it may be loveli- 
ness of sympathetic serving, or the beauty of 
aggressive battle for righteousness; it may take 
any one of many forms of exalted thinking and 
endeavor, yet its realization comes only when 
one eats, and drinks, and bends every energy, 
not for the sake of living, but for the realization 
of that which is more than living. 

How lamentable for a human life to end and 
find at the final judgment that all its days were 
of less value to the world than that of a coral 
polyp! How wonderful for one to be made out 
of dust, and after a while to crumble back into 
dust, and yet, refusing to grovel in the dust, 
leave the world richer, and better, and more 
beautiful, so that people of another age will 
breathe his name in reverence as they behold 
that which he hath wrought. Professor Finsen, 
the inventor of the "light cure," was an invalid 
for many years, yet he labored like a slave, in 
the severest self-denial, to bring his invention, 
without compensation, to the service of the 
world's sick and suffering. He had but one dread 
and that was the regret of dying, and leaving his 
little five-year-old boy without any memory of 
his father. He desired to live long enough to 
impress his face and life upon the memory of 
his son, that, in the after years, the growing 



38 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

man would never forget the one who toiled so 
earnestly for him. He did not want to be for- 
gotten. How little did he dream of the immor- 
tality that was his! He found an unquarried 
statue in the sunbeam where others had over- 
looked it. Through ceaseless toil he brought it 
within the vision of the world and gained a name 
that countless ages will not forget. 

How wonderful to be the son of such a man! 
And though the image of the father's face be 
blotted from the memory, the statue that he 
carved will help and heal the generations. How 
wonderful to be the son of such a man, but how 
much more wonderful it is to be the man him- 
self ! To fight with optimistic heart against the 
ravages of disease, to overcome the natural 
yearnings of a father's heart, to endure the most 
slavish toil without thought or hope of com- 
pensation, to be a sick man fighting for others 
who were sick; a dying man making battle 
against disease that others may not taste of 
death! 

This is the joy unspeakable, to know that life 
is not in vain, but everlastingly worth while. 
The visions shall not fade as summer clouds at 
twilight time, but shall live in that which is as 
imperishable as marble. Each one can say with 
deep resolve: "Men shall behold the beauty of 
my soul by beholding the beauty of my daily 



UNQUARRIED STATUES 39 

life. Since words are blossoms, I shall, with 
gracious speech, show my friends how choice a 
garden I have planted in my heart. Since every 
blossom bears a seed I shall take pleasure in 
planting them within the hearts of others, that 
the beauty of my life may live in them. Out of 
the marble block that it has been mine to break 
from its hiding place, I shall cai've the image I 
have treasured so long within my heart." To 
do this is to find a joy unspeakable. Life is not 
useless, but gloriously worth while. Eating, and 
drinking, and toiling for that which is far more 
than life, one can never die. 



VI 

THE AGES TO COME 

No matter how earnestly we may love our 
life-calling, and rejoice in our chosen field of 
activity, there are hours when the easiest task 
becomes irksome and its daily repetition seems 
unbearable. However healthy the soul and 
robust the moral nature, a constant onslaught of 
sorrow may woimd like a poisoned dart, filling 
the soul with painful forebodings. Beholding the 
transitoriness of life, and the apparent frailty 
and uncertainty of those things upon which we 
place our heaviest dependence, we become de- 
pressed, and feel that nothing is permanent and 
that life's products are but empty shadows. 
These are common experiences, and their fre- 
quent repetition does not lessen their depressive 
power. Coming upon us to-day they are just as 
hurtful as when they challenged us for the first 
time. 

That we may overcome these disagreeable 
tendencies, and live a life victorious, Paul re- 
vealed the secret of his own achievements. To 
him work never became drudgery, sorrow never 
festered or left a feverish wound, while even the 

40 



THE AGES TO COME 41 

most commonplace incident was of the deepest 
significance because he had learned to acquire 
and maintain a deep perspective that placed 
each moment of time in the white light of 
eternity. He believed that we are not created 
for the hour but for the centuries, and that we 
must work not so much for the present hour as 
for the years that are yet to be. The one purpose 
of every word and deed, to Paul, was to "show the 
ages to come the exceeding riches of God's grace." 

As the prolific and luxuriant vegetation of the 
carboniferous age bordered the lakes with ferns, 
the rivers with reeds, and the hillsides and 
valleys with gigantic trees of grotesque form, 
that, in the ages to come, man might have the 
exhaustless coalbeds to protect him from the 
cold; as the coral polyps, buried beneath the 
waves, love and labor and die, generation after 
generation, until a coral island lifts its head to 
receive the kisses of the passing waves and ex- 
tend the arms of a protecting harbor, that, in 
the ages to come, the storm-tossed mariners may 
find safe shelter against the stormy wind and 
wave; so you and I are to love, and labor, and 
die, not for ourselves, but that the ages to come, 
through our goodness and fidelity, may behold 
the riches of God's grace. 

This does not mean that we are to so bury 
the present in the future that our lives shall 



42 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

consist of nothing save vague dreams and idle 
contemplations. It means the opposite. We are 
to magnify the present and give it increasing 
value by crowding it with an eternal signif- 
icance. We are not to drop to-day into the 
silent ocean of the future and see it fade from 
sight, but into to-day we are to crowd to- 
morrow and all the other to-morrows that shall 
follow. Instead of losing the drop of water in 
Niagara we are to crowd all the dash and splen- 
dor and power of Niagara into the single drop of 
water; instead of losing the dew in the ocean, we 
crowd the ocean into the dewdrop; instead of 
burying the present into the future, we gather all 
eternity and crowd it into a single lifetime, so 
that every second of time becomes as precious as 
a thousand years of eternity, and the smallest 
task we have to perform becomes as sacred as 
the songs of the angels. 

When one possesses this conception of life 
that crowds a vast eternity within the compass 
of a single individual life, no toil can ever become 
drudgery. Every deed has divine significance. 
The most ordinary task will be performed care- 
fully, knowing that it must stand the scrutiny 
and criticisms of the passing centuries. We 
labor then with the various elements of life, as 
the artists of Venice toil with their priceless 
mosaics, willing to spend a lifetime of pains- 



THE AGES TO COME 43 

taking endeavor in forming a single feature of a 
saint, knowing that long after they themselves 
have ceased to toil the wisdom of untold cen- 
turies shall review their efforts to either praise or 
blame. Hitherto we have despised the common- 
place things that fell to our hands, while we 
busied ourselves searching for some great thing 
worthy of our effort, with the result that nothing 
has been accomplished; now we find, that that 
only is truly great which is commonplace. 
Divine opportunities are everywhere. In the 
low-browed man upon the street we see the 
possibility of an ennobled and redeemed hu- 
manity. In the waif, crying from hunger, we see 
the center of world-wide and eternal destinies. 
Words are winged messengers, so we learn to 
study them with care, and speak them with the 
precision with which a musician strikes his 
chords. Divine destinies are depending upon the 
perfection with which we toil, adding a charm to 
every endeavor that never fades with weariness. 
There can be no drudgery to him who has a 
perspective eternity long. 

This conception of life which Paul gives us 
will carry us unharmed through all the mis- 
fortunes of life. It is impossible for us to escape 
sorrow. By rigid economy we may save our 
money only to have it stolen by a deceitful 
friend; we may build a home, only to find it 



44 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

purchased and occupied by another; loved ones, 
more precious than our own lives, have been 
lured from our side by the hand of death. These 
hours are naturally dark and of tortuous length, 
and if it were not for the fact that we have 
learned to think in terms of eternity, we would 
die of a broken heart. But we do not die; we 
pass through them with triumphant tread. The 
soul sobs but does not bleed; the heart hurts but 
does not break. We are not living for this world 
alone; our horizon has been widened because we 
have been lifted to a higher level; we can now 
see two worlds; our faith sweeps onward as far 
as God can think. The earthly home for which 
we planned and toiled has passed into the hands 
of another, but we rejoice in the knowledge that 
we have a home, not made with toiling, blistered 
hands of earth, but one eternal in the heavens. 
Our loved ones no longer greet us at the table or 
occupy their accustomed places in the family 
circle, but we have not lost them forever. They 
have simply passed from time into eternity, and 
because we also are the children of eternity, they 
are still our own, and we shall see them once 
again. Thank God for the transforming power 
that comes into every human life when, by 
divine aid, one crowds eternal significance into 
his days, and works, not for himself, but for "the 
ages to come." 



THE AGES TO COME 45 

Paul's view of life enables us to find perfect 
satisfaction in working with the frailties of time 
in building that which is immortal in character 
and service. Possessed with such a purpose, the 
spider's web becomes a cable, dust becomes 
slabs of marble, and seconds becomes decades. 
There is nothing more fragile than a word, 
spoken in stammering weakness, but with a 
trembling desire to be of service, yet out of one 
w^ord fitly spoken may be created an influence 
that sweeps heaven and earth. A faltering word 
of Christian testimony was spoken by a godly 
man made weak by an unconquerable embar- 
rassment, but his utterance proved mighty. 
Lodging in the heart of Charles Spurgeon, it 
started him on his wonderful career that is yet 
shaking all Christendom. The smile of the face 
is far more delicate than the frailest blossom that 
opens its soft petals in obedience to the caressing 
influence of the sun, for its existence is but for 
the fraction of a second; yet one kindly, love- 
illumined look has been the force that has lifted 
multitudes of mortals out of despondency and 
uselessness, and made them the creators of 
mighty moral and religious forces. It was a 
smile that saved John G. Wooley for the cause 
of temperance. A smile, and a word, and the 
gift of a handkerchief were all that Frances E. 
Willard used to redeem one of the most notori- 



46 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

ous characters of Chicago, and make her one of 
God's ministers of Hght among the fallen. 

When one learns to live with the light of 
eternity flooding his pathway there is not an 
event in hfe so small and insignificant that he 
cannot employ it to create, and afterward use it, 
to sustain eternal influences. There is joy now 
in living for Christ, but let us live, not for that 
joy alone, but that, in the ages to come, we may 
show the exceeding riches of God's grace. Let 
them, through us, behold what the grace of God 
can do to save, to keep, to empower, and to 
make immortal such sin-smitten ones as we 
have been. This is the secret for making toil 
pleasant, sorrows helpless, and the humblest 
effort an enterprise of such character as crowds 
earth with richer meaning, and fills the heavens 
with new-found joys. Show them that the 
greatest of ail known forces is a Christ-filled 
life. 



VII 

THE UNLOCKED DOOR OF TRUTH 

History has proven that the power of the 
"All Highest" War Lord is as weak as a baby's 
arm compared with the power of the humblest 
individual who has entered into and taken 
possession of some great truth. A thousand 
lords and ladies were gathered within the 
Babylonian palace which was ablaze with light 
and filled with music. All hail to King Belshaz- 
zar! His praises were upon every lip. All honor 
to the royal family that had lifted the hanging 
gardens above the low-lying plains, who had 
swimg gates of bronze and planned the mightiest 
city in the world. Every hp praised and every 
heart feared the power of the daring king. But 
when the finger of God wrote a message of fire 
upon the palace walls it was no longer Belshazzar 
who was ruler. The fate of king and lord and 
ladies was in the hand of Daniel. He alone of 
that great throng had seen and entered into the 
truth of temperance and self-control. Such was 
the sustaining power of that possessed truth 
that when the man-made king trembled, and a 
nation crumbled into oblivion, he alone stood 

47 



48 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

unmoved and triumphant amid the wreck and 
chaos. 

Before the throne of ecclesiastical autocracy 
the rulers of the nations bowed in weakness and 
everlasting shame. The autocracy of supersti- 
tion is the most merciless and deadly known, but 
when the power of Rome was at the zenith of 
her unscrupulous reign, Martin Luther, a com- 
mon man with uncommon sense, discovered and 
entered into the great truth that "the just shall 
live by faith." Entering into that truth, he 
found a power before which the claims of the 
Pope became insignificant, and by his boldness, 
brought religious liberty to the people, thus 
gaining universal love and immortality. 

Mary was Queen of England, and with that 
overzeal of religious bigotry, was ruling with un- 
questioned power and severity. Hugh Latimer 
was only a humble preacher, one of the least of 
the queen's subjects, living among the poor, but 
beside him. Queen Mary sinks into everlasting 
contempt. The robes of fire wrapped his body 
in their golden folds, hiding him forever from 
the sight of man, but the world has not forgotten 
him. His dust knows no burial place, but be- 
cause he lived in the sheltering tabernacle of a 
great truth he will live forever in the hearts of 
those who love religious tolerance, while the dust 
of Mary crumbles in the gruesome vault at 



THE UNLOCKED DOOR OF TRUTH 49 

Westminster Abbey, with no lip to sing her 
praises to the passing generations. Royal or 
ecclesiastical power is nothing compared with 
the enduring authority of a common man who 
has found, and entered into, and wholly and 
completely lives a great eternal truth of God. 

Truth incarnate in human life is almighty, but 
truth in the abstract is as helpless as is the dust 
of the Egyptian highways, which witnessed the 
world's mightiest pageants, but which are un- 
able to tell the story of mighty armies, royal 
cavalcades, and kingly processions that once 
tramped upon them. Truth has always existed. 
However conceited a religious leader may be, no 
one ever dared to presume himself the creator 
of a truth. Long before the world had settled 
upon its foundations, and the constellations of 
stars, like chandeliers, swayed and swung their 
pendants of light, all truth beat and throbbed 
within the heart of the Almighty. Throughout 
the beauty of verdant slope, crested wave, and 
starlit sky, these words of encouragement have 
ever rung: "Ye shall know the truth, and the 
truth shall make you free." The truths of 
civilization have been in existence since creation, 
yet in every century heathenism has flourished. 
The truth about human freedom has always 
been, yet Rameses sat upon a throne and drove 
the Hebrews to their task, beating their backs 



60 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

with knotted thongs and murdering their chil- 
dren; the barons lived in palatial palaces fed in 
luxury, while serfs toiled for harvests which they 
could never gather, and starving, dared not 
plead for a morsel of the food their toil provided; 
the Sultan of Turkey reveled in orgies, flagrant 
and disgusting, while humble Armenians were 
torn asunder, their bleeding bodies fed to swine, 
their wives and children tortured beyond belief, 
while no civilized nation dared lift its hand in 
protest. Truth, in itself, is not omnipotent. To 
be of value, truth must be entered into and 
possessed. 

Every truth has a door. To ignorance the 
door is barred and bolted. To thoughtlessness, 
the door remains unseen. Only to the eye 
trained with prayer, faith in God, and love for 
man, is given the vision of these bright portals, 
and the possession of the key by which he can 
unlock the door and enter into and enjoy the 
truth, which the world has long known by heart, 
but which had never enveloped, sheltered, and 
controlled their lives. If he has the courage to 
use the key and open the door and enter in, he 
shall not only feel the saving power of God, but 
he shall leave an open way through which all 
men may pass to greater power. If he refuses 
to unlock the door, and, like the learned ones of 
whom Christ spoke, carries away the key, enter- 



THE UNLOCKED DOOR OF TRUTH 51 

ing not in themselves and hindering those who 
would enter, he becomes an exile, without home 
through time and eternity. 

That we may more clearly comprehend this 
truth let us consider a chapter of American 
history. Hayne had finished his classic and con- 
vincing speech. With gracious charm he had 
proclaimed the doctrine of union without 
liberty, a nation of free people, half slave. The 
rapt attention and tribute of silent applause 
from the audience told how critical the situation 
had become. Opposed to him was Daniel 
Webster, America's favorite child of genius, 
whose face was as classic as a Greek god's, and 
whose commanding bearing won battles like a 
general. He was a scholar of the strong New 
England type, searching for the key to unlock 
the truth that the nation needed, and make it 
of easy access to the people. He saw that there 
could be no union without universal freedom. 
Hour after hour he proclaimed the truth, making 
the mightiest speech the nation had ever heard, 
swaying his audience back to the realm of clear 
thinking. Finally, with one sentence, "Union 
and liberty, now and forever, one and insepar- 
able," he revealed to an awakened nation that 
he had found the key that would unlock the 
door of truth that the hour needed. But in his 
hour of triumph, dazzled by the possibility of 



62 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

becoming President, he refused to use the key. 
To gain the sohd South he uttered his fateful 
speech for compromise. The North held its 
breath in expectancy while New England sobbed 
like one bereft of his favorite child. He who had 
the key refused to enter in himself and hindered 
those who would have entered. 

But New England had another son of genius 
who, on the eventful night that Webster, with 
trembling fingers, tried, and failed, to pick up 
the key that he had thrown away, left Faneuil 
Hall with blazing, burning thoughts. He too had 
found the way, but was unknown and untried. 
Again he was in Faneuil Hall sitting beside 
James Russell Lowell, listening to the mad 
mouthings of men, who, for the money involved, 
were endeavoring to rechristen Wrong and call 
it Right. He had waited weary weeks, but now 
he was unable to keep back his flaming indigna- 
tion. Rising, he began to speak. On the very 
platform where Webster had fallen he began to 
plead the right of human liberty. New England 
was thrilled with hope. Here at last was a man 
who not only saw the truth but was determined 
to enter into it. With the confidence of a 
prophet he used the key, unlocked the door and 
showed a nation the way it ought to go. 

Truth must become incarnate in man and man 
must be incarnate in truth. Every Christian 



THE UNLOCKED DOOR OF TRUTH 53 

man will testify to this. In childhood you com- 
mitted scripture which had little meaning to 
your childish mind. It was not until in the after 
years when sorrow came, and grief blinded the 
eye, and pain wounded the heart, that the clear, 
sweet voice of memory began to repeat these 
verses, and what had been meaningless in child- 
hood became great, wholesome, sheltering, 
protecting truths, in which you found all the 
consolations of God. 

It is a wonderful hour when the soul enters 
into and takes possession of God's great truth, 
becomes the master of all its stored up power, 
and begins to use it in the service of love. It is 
a wonderful experience and need never be 
delayed, for the door is easy to find. Years ago 
earth was blessed by the coming of One who 
worked hard at the carpenter trade, and in the 
school of toil and prayer, found the way that 
scholars had overlooked. Standing before kings 
and earthly potentates he said: "I am the way, 
the truth, and the life." His spirit is the way 
for men to live, the door through which they 
pass into all truth, the life of fullest spiritual 
development. Christ is the open way to every 
truth. Through him men attain the proper 
point of view, and, learning to obey the Father 
as did he, begin to live the life triumphant. 



VIII 
WEAVING SUNBEAMS 

Natuee is always busy weaving sunbeams, 
and not one of them, like a knotted thread, is 
cast from her loom. The waves cast their crystal 
spray upon the sands to waste away, but not so 
with the sun as he lavishly casts his beams 
broadcast o'er the earth. Not one of them goes 
upon a fruitless errand, and not one of them fails 
to reach its intended goal. It is not that the sun 
is wise in directing its energy, but because the 
earth is ready to utilize, with untiring fidelity, 
the gift of sunlight. 

How abundantly the sunbeams come! The 
arched sky is an upturned basket, out of which 
God is pouring his wealth of sunlight upon a 
thirsty, needy planet. These rays of light fall 
everywhere, because they are needed every- 
where. Upon arctic snow and desert sand and 
undiscovered ocean waves they fall as readily as 
upon the forests of Brittany or the vineyards of 
France. They place their gleaming coronets 
upon the crystal brows of the Alps. They dance 
and flash their jewels, as they hold carnival in 

54 



WEAVING SUNBEAMS 65 

the Northern Lights. Even after the sun is set 
they peer at us through the parted clouds and 
leap at us from their hiding places in the moon. 
They fall in the most inaccessible places, yet 
none of them are ever wasted. As the parched 
earth drinks raindrops, so the old world absorbs 
sunbeams. Swifter and more powerful than the 
leaping waters of a cataract are they poured 
upon the earth — a Niagara, world-wide and sun- 
high, with never-ceasing floods of hght that 
bathe each portion of the globe. They are not 
piled in heaps; they do not swish and whirl, 
cutting a gorge through solid rock, or form 
a whirlpool to menace humanity, but the earth 
absorbs them all, however rapidly they come, 
and places them in her mysterious loom. Here, 
in the depths, beyond our sight, the sunbeams 
are woven into invisible cords that hold the 
needles of all the compasses to the north that 
no traveler need be lost in the forest, and no ship 
perish in the sea. Here, in the depths, the sun- 
beams are woven into mighty cables of electric 
power that man picks up with the fingers of the 
dynamo and compels to lift his burdens, pull 
his trains, propel his ships, and serve him in a 
thousand ways. Here, in the depths, is woven 
that mysterious power that carries the wireless 
message through the rocks of the mountains and 
the channels of the sea, and wraps the earth in 



56 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

a diaphanous garb that makes the wireless 
telephone a possibility. 

The world we see is but woven sunbeams. The 
forests of oak are the sunbeams of yesterday, 
wrought into gnarled and knotted fingers to 
grasp the sunbeams of to-day and wind them on 
a myriad unseen shuttles. Soon they shall ap- 
pear woven in the texture of notched leaf and 
carved chalice of the acorn's cup. The sunbeams 
falling upon the tangled branches of the hillside 
vineyard, are woven into buds, and leaves, and 
clinging tendrils, and afterward into the rich 
cluster of luscious grapes. The sunbeams fall 
upon the buried seed and are woven into an 
emerald lever with which the clod is lifted, into 
sturdy leaves that are chemical laboratories 
where crude sap is changed into milk, into heads 
of golden wheat with which to feed a thought- 
less, hungry world. Sunbeams are woven into 
corn and oats, into apples and peaches, into nuts 
and berries. Falling along the railroad grade, 
they are woven into violets; falling in the 
swamps, they are woven into buttercups; fall- 
ing in the thicket, they are woven into the silken 
folds of the wild-rose petal. 

As nature weaves the sunbeam and not the 
shadow so man ought to develop his power of 
utilizing happiness and joy. The sunshine of life 
ought not to be thrown away like confetti and 



WEAVING SUNBEAMS 57 

ribbon papers on a gala day. Thoughtlessly our 
youths and maidens dance and sing in giddy, 
senseless manner, throwing away sunbeams as 
though their lives were only bits of colored glass 
through which the light of joy and happiness 
should pass. Having no looms with which to 
weave their sunbeams into that which would 
adorn their souls with garments of ever-growing 
life, they soon become old and haggard, lifeless 
and dead, a burned-out planet like the moon, 
unable to appreciate the sunlight that never fails 
to fall. Much of the difference between men 
is due to the ability of one and the inability of 
the other to make the passing joys of life be- 
come a permanent, abiding element of his life. 
There is no life without sufficient sunlight to 
weave a gracious personality. Wholesomeness 
of character is not the result of partiality on 
God's part, neither is hideous irritability of dis- 
position occasioned by God's neglect of one 
of his children. The difference between whole- 
someness and unwholesomeness of character is 
that of the right and wrong use of the blessings 
which God bestows upon all alike. He who casts 
his sunbeams away will find old age desert and 
lifeless, while he who weaves them all into a 
pleasing personality, will always experience the 
joy of a more abundant life. A smile is softer 
than a silken fiber and wears far longer. Its 



68 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

colors never fade, nor pass out of style. Woven 
into a robe of genuine cheerfulness the soul 
possesses rich adornment. These are the individ- 
uals whom children love, men seek to honor, and 
all the world respects. A king's robe is common- 
place compared with the attractive vesture of a 
healthy, cheerful disposition which anyone may 
weave out of sunbeams, with which God crowds 
even the most secluded, humble lives. 

This occupation is also the secret of sound and 
vigorous influence. All men possess the power 
of influence, but even when one has the best 
intentions he may wield a harmful, baleful in- 
fluence because of an irritable and complaining 
disposition. A petulant temper and irascible 
disposition are the thimder that curds much of 
the milk of human kindness, and an application 
of alum will not tend to sweeten the curd. With 
a sharp tongue one may be driven to hard labor, 
but the wounds he carries in his heart will pre- 
vent him from performing a perfect task. Scold- 
ing and fault-finding have driven multitudes into 
iniquity. It is difficult to drive bees, but one can 
lure them any distance with a field of blooming 
clover. By forgetting to weave sunbeams into 
wholesome character one not only loses the joy 
of being cheerful but fails in one of the supreme 
objectives of life — that of wielding intelligently 
a helpful, healthy, and enduring influence. 



WEAVING SUNBEAxMS 59 

The secret of achievement may also be 
described as weaving sunbeams. In a victorious 
life the blessings of God take permanent place 
in the work of hand and brain. Such a life is a 
loom which receives only that he may produce, 
the quality of the production depending upon 
the care and patience with which he works, in- 
difference producing mediocrity, carefulness 
leading to perfection. What the world calls 
genius is simply the mastery of the gracious art 
of weaving sunbeams into polished sentences, 
enduring thoughts, embroidered tapestry, living 
poem, inspiring painting, and graceful statue. 
The way out of mediocrity is to weave one's 
personal blessings into world-wide benefits. 

Here also is found the way to overcome life's 
obstacles. A frown never wins a battle. It was 
a singing army that crossed the sea and helped 
win the World War. Amid the dangers, hard- 
ships, and privations our soldiers gathered sim- 
beams, and with a cheerfulness never before 
witnessed upon a field of battle did their full 
part. Trenches, barbed-wire entanglement, 
and treacherous pitfall are nothing to one who 
weaves his sunbeams into song. Thus all diffi- 
culties fade away and vanish. 

These statements are only another way of 
saying that one should weave God into every 
fiber of life. The sun is always emblematic of the 



60 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

Father, and he who weaves sunbeams will know 
and love God. This is no idle saying, nor a bit 
of rhetoric, but a soul-saving truth. It is the 
sun that banishes the shadows; it is God who 
enables us to overcome our temptations, pain 
and sorrow. The more we utilize his revelations 
the brighter the pathway, until at last we shall 
stand in his presence and have no more need of 
the sun, for we have him. "They shall hunger 
no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall 
the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the 
Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall 
feed them, and shall lead them into living 
fountains of waters: and God shall wipe all tears 
from their eyes." Weaving sunbeams in a world 
of shadows, we prepare ourselves for the un- 
shadowed land where God is the everlasting 
Light. There, without sin or suffering, we shall 
know God. 



IX 

THE PATHWAY OF A NOBLE PURPOSE 

As the sleepless eye thirsts for the dawn, and 
the troubled child hungers for the sound of its 
mother's voice, so each growing soul seeks a 
coveted goal the attaining of which, to him, 
means success. As boys, to be boys, must dream 
their dreams of strife and conflict upon a battle's 
front, and girls, to be girls, must dream their 
milder dreams of love, so coming maturity de- 
mands of each aspiring soul that he hnger long 
upon the visions of strife that lead to success. 
It is well to seek for great things, for each suc- 
cess that enters the golden portals of our lives 
brings many chariots filled with golden gifts. 
Returning to his home, the Roman victor was 
honored with a triumph in which, on golden 
plate and velvet spread, the trophies and spoils 
of conquest were displayed. In this way the 
ambitious Roman youth learned that success is 
always attended by a great procession of rich 
rewards. The one who conquers feels more than 
the soul-thrill of victory. Like Samson, he finds 
the unexpected reward of a carcass filled with 
honey awaiting his hungry lips. 

61 



62 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

While success is worthy of one's best eflPorts, 
and all men hunger for it, very few, indeed, have 
ever reached that happy goal. They failed be- 
cause they refused to follow the pathway of a 
noble purpose. They believed that success was 
altogether a matter of outward form. Seeing 
the conqueror riding in triumphant procession, 
they thought that the applause arose, not be- 
cause he had conquered, but because he wore a 
helmet and a shield. Hurrying to an emporium, 
they too purchased helmets and shields and 
strutted forth to win a world's applause. Foolish 
souls! The public eye is keen and penetrating 
and always apprehends the truth. If the people 
greet a king with shouts, it is not because they 
see a gleaming crown, but because they recog- 
nize a royal soul beneath the crown. If the 
multitude cheer a warrior, it is not because he 
bears a standard, but because, in courageous 
conflict, he won a battle for the people. Spain 
greeted the discoverer of America, not because 
of the grain and fruit he brought, but because 
he had braved the dangers of a dark unknown, 
and blazed a pathway through untracked 
wastes. 

History repeats the story of a weird Scythian 
custom. When the head of a house died his 
family would adorn his corpse in finest raiment, 
place it in a chariot, and, amid shouts and 



PATHWAY OF A NOBLE PURPOSE 63 

hosannas, draw it to the homes of former friends. 
Coming to each dwelling place, the corpse would 
be greeted with pomp and splendor. For the 
final home-coming the steps would be carpeted 
with silken shawl and choice embroidery, while 
lighted chandeliers flashed welcome to the dead 
and sunken eyes. Within the doorway the 
crowned corpse was placed at the head of a 
banqueting table at which his gay companions 
sat and made merry, eating and drinking in his 
honor. Thus many days were spent in honoring 
the dead before the body was laid away in the 
tomb. To us it was a most gruesonie custom, but 
each Scythian youth struggled to possess a home 
of his own, that some day he might be carried as 
a crowned corpse through the city streets, and 
finally, be seated in honor at his own banqueting 
board. 

This ancient custom was the outgrowth of a 
mistaken view of life still prevailing in many 
quarters, for the crowned corpse is seen to-day 
in many public gatherings. What else is the man 
who seeks office for the selfish purpose and 
pleasure of holding office? In youth he saw the 
governor's chair or Senate seat, and found that 
every chord of his nature was awakened and 
longed to reach that goal. He determined that 
this vision of his soul should be transcribed from 
the pages of his imagination to the pages of his 



64 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

nation's history. Two pathways opened. The 
one of a noble purpose, saying, "Seek office, that 
you may render needed service to your fellow 
countrymen." The pathway of selfishness 
opened its portals saying, "Seek office for the 
sake of gain." Seeing that trickery and deceit 
promised the easier way to gain his end, he 
started with leaps and bounds. He cast lots with 
dishonesty and dissipation. He became a per- 
jurer, a liar, and a thief. He sold himself to an 
unworthy cause, at last the coveted crown was 
his. To-day he sits at the head of the table, not 
a great ruler, but a crowned corpse. In his 
struggle for power he lost all that constitutes 
real living. 

What else is the man who seeks wealth for the 
sole sake of having money .f^ For years he has 
lived the life of a slave, denying himseK beauty, 
music, books, devotions, and benevolence, until, 
at last, his name appears in Bradstreet marked 
"AA," and the world greets him as a king. Who 
is he.^ A crowned corpse. When he began his 
career two pathways opened. The one of a noble 
purpose saying, "Make money for the sake of 
doing good." The other way, the way of selfish- 
ness, saying, "Make money to satisfy your own 
desires." He chose the latter way. He has his 
robe and crown, and is seated amid light and 
applause, but he is not capable of appreciating 



PATHWAY OF A NOBLE PURPOSE 65 

its mieaning. Long ago he died to honor, and 
truth, and love, and generous impulse. He 
knows not the meaning of life. 

Among the crowned corpses should also be 
mentioned those who follow society for society's 
sake. Through imitation they have destroyed 
personality. They have smothered their souls 
under the weight of their self-adornment. In 
their wild search for physical pleasure all the 
radiant, sparkling glory of a cultured spirituality 
has faded into the pallor of death. They are 
richly robed, they ride in state, receive the 
plaudits of their followers, sit at table spread 
with gold and silver plate, but they are now 
dead to all the higher things of life and are un- 
able to appreciate the empty honors they 
receive. 

The secret of successful living is to follow the 
pathway of a noble purpose. At first the path 
may seem a long and arduous one, but it is the 
only way that has booths in which to rest the 
weary feet and crowns for living souls to wear. 
It is in this pathway that one learns the secret 
of the Christ life, for as he journeys on the way 
to nobility a voice is ever whispering in his 
ears: "Life consists in living unselfishly. Seek 
power only that you may have strength to serve 
those who are weak. Gain wealth only that you 
may be able to multiply your usefulness." The 



66 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

road of a noble purpose leads to a throne, not 
one for the dead body, but a throne for the living 
soul. Here too is applause, not such as the 
Scythian dead received but such as was accorded 
the Roman conqueror. What a thrill follows 
noble endeavor ! What a joy to come to old age 
having fought battles for those who were too 
weak to fight for themselves, and brought vic- 
tory where otherwise his people would have 
suffered defeat and death! 

The world honors those who honor it. The 
ruler who has followed the pathway of a noble 
purpose is always honored by his people. Before 
him is spread the banquet of a nation's reverence 
and homage. The man who, in getting money, 
has kept his hands clean from dishonesty, made 
just returns for all labor he required, and has 
kept his heart tender toward his fellow man, is 
honored by everyone. Men delight to fill his 
days with happiness, as honeysuckle loves to fill 
the air with sweetness. When the world dis- 
covers a woman whose desire for society is not to 
satisfy her vanity, or fill a shallow soul with 
selfish pleasures, but her desire is to scatter 
jewels of love and gems of inspiration to make 
rich and beautiful the lives of the common folk, 
it crowns her in the temple of its heart and calls 
her an angel sent of God. 

The days of autocratic power are ended, but 



PATHWAY OF A NOBLE PURPOSE 67 

the hands of the people are busy building 
thrones and weaving crowns of gold. So long as 
there is a love for nobility in the human heart 
men and women of nobilit^^ will be placed in 
power. Life consisteth not in the abundance of 
the things which a man possesseth but in follow- 
ing the pathway of a noble purpose. 



SWORDS FOR MORAL BATTLES 

The best weapons with which to fight moral 
battles have already been forged, sharpened, and 
polished, waiting to be unsheathed for conflict. 
There are some things that the ingenuity of man 
cannot improve. Man's genius may perfect the 
locomotive to give swiftness to his feet; it may 
magnify his voice until his whispers are heard a 
thousand miles away; it may perfect machinery 
giving speed and accuracy to his busy fingers; 
it may print his speech and multiply his audi- 
ence a millionfold; it may open new fields of 
endeavor, thus increasing the circle of his in- 
fluence; it may do many things to break down 
barriers, and increase usefulness; but all the 
genius and skill of man can never devise nor 
contribute to any life a better or keener weapon 
with which to fight moral battles than belonged 
to us the eventful morning we left the old home- 
place and mother's presence, to begin, among 
strangers, our first conquest with the world. 

As a royal exile David was facing a grave 
crisis. The relentless enemy was pressing hard, 

68 



SWORDS FOR MORAL BATTLES 69 

and he possessed no means of defense. Leaving 
his hiding place, he hurried into the presence of 
Ahimelech and asked for a spear or a sword. As 
Ahimelech was a priest, and not a warrior, he 
was about to dismiss the young man empty- 
handed when, suddenly, he remembered. 
Wrapped in cloth, hanging behind the high 
priest's robe, was an old sword, the very one that 
this young man had one time taken from the 
stiffening fingers of a dying giant, whom he had 
slain on the eventful morning of his first great 
conflict. Slowly and carefully the old man took 
the gleaming blade from its resting place, un- 
wrapped it with reverent touch, explaining that 
it was all that he had to offer. David was in- 
stantly filled with delight. His eyes gleamed 
with fire, his heart and soul were thrilled with 
memories of that bright morning, when, filled 
with the ardor of youth, he had run down the 
mountainside to make conquest with the giant. 
This was that giant's sword ! The very one that 
he had wrenched from the stiffening fingers of 
the vanquished foe. Reaching forward he 
grasped it in his strong right hand saying- 
"There is none like that; give it me." There 
may have been and probably were better and 
more beautiful swords in the world; keener 
steel may have been forged into swords for the 
generals and kings of other lands, but for David 



70 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

there was none other quite so efficient as the one 
with which he had gained his first victory. 

There are no newly discovered weapons with 
which to fight the moral battles of to-day. As 
David was aroused from the shrinking spirit of 
a fugitive to become a conquering king, by being 
given the weapon of his former battle, so each 
man must make requisition upon the past. 
Behold the weapons which hang in the sacred 
temple of our souls awaiting the grasp of a 
courageous hand. 

There is the sword of our childhood dreams. 
Let memory make you a little child again with 
brother and sister about the hearthstone on a 
winter's evening, and let your heart glow with 
good cheer. Or let the sunshine of summer fall 
across your way until you are a child once more, 
running with bare feet through the winding ways 
of the meadow, chasing moths and butterflies, or 
wading the stream back of the old schoolhouse, 
your heart as carefree as the rippling waters. 
Let the dull monotonous hum and soothing 
influences of those happy days of wonderment 
come back to your heart until your eyes half 
close and you begin redreaming your youthful 
dreams. Blessed dreams, that cause the muscles 
of your face to relax, while laughter comes to the 
lips, and compels you to forget the blistering 
ways you have trodden since those sun-bright 



SWORDS FOR MORAL BATTLES 71 

days. Dream your dreams of tenderness and 
confidence, for the tendency of the city is to 
harden the heart and dull the sympathies. Then 
will you have a worthy weapon with which to 
make battle. You need your old-time faith in 
God and confidence in man, your former opti- 
mistic view of life that gave brightness to every 
future fancy; your trustfulness in mother's love 
and father's counsel; the belief that divine power 
was working for your success because your heart 
was pure; let these memories and fond dreams 
come to you once again. You need them. With- 
out the dreams of life the arm has little strength 
and the will but little power. Let them come 
back, bringing smiles for your face, and wreaths 
for your brow, and heaps of gold for your coffers. 
Youthful dreams must never fade from the 
gallery of memory if men would achieve. Lay 
hold upon them with all your power, knowing 
that while manhood's wisdom is valuable, it is 
not half so effectual in fighting life's battles as 
are the warm dreams of youth. With the sword 
of a worthy dream a man can defeat any adver- 
sary, scale any rampart, take any stronghold. 
Youth's dreams were never intended to be lost. 
They are stored away in the most sacred part 
of your nature. Plead for their return, and find- 
ing them, exclaim with David, "There is none 
like that; give it me." 



72 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

There is the sword of your old-time enthusi- 
asm and resolution. There was a time when you 
believed yourself the possessor of a divine 
quality that would compel your brightest 
dream to come true. With age you are becoming 
more prosaic. You are not so confident and 
self-assertive. You excuse your shortcomings by 
asserting that you are becoming "more con- 
servative," forgetful that conservatism is very 
often only a refined name for dry rot or petrifica- 
tion. No man can win a fight with merely the 
weapons of conservatism. What you need is the 
old-time enthusiasm with which you announced 
your determination to leave home, the enthusi- 
asm with which you packed the old trunk, and 
that fired your soul as you drove away from the 
old homestead, and made you determined to 
win fame and fortune at any cost. Time instead 
of deadening should kindle the fires of enthusi- 
asm. You are living in the greatest hour of 
history. You are better equipped and environed 
and protected than the people of any generation. 
The quest was never so valuable; the rewards 
for noble endeavor never more abounding. 
There is no reason for any man giving up to in- 
difference or despair. Take up your old-time 
enthusiasm until your heart burns with power 
that quickens the step and strengthens the arm. 
Lay hold of this conquering sword with which 



SWORDS FOR MORAL BATTLES 73 

you have slain many a giant and cry with the 
spirit of a true conqueror, "There is none like 
that; give it me." 

There is the sword of your childhood faith in 
God. As you have grown older you have 
acquainted yourself with many theories and 
tried many dogmas strange and fanciful, but 
none of them have had sufficient strength and 
keenness to win your battle. You have been 
compelled to throw them aside, and now, in the 
crisis, you are compelled to face the enemy of 
your soul without means of defense. Then take 
up the sword of your childhood faith in God that 
filled your younger years with beauty, that 
warmed your enthusiasm, and made you fight 
single-handed while an army trembled. Kneel 
once more as you knelt at your mother's knee; 
look up with an open face toward your Father 
in heaven; cherish his words and keep his com- 
mandments; and from this hour no man can 
defeat you. In the outstretched hand of your 
Christian mother is the sword of your old-time 
faith in God. May you have the wisdom of 
David when he saw the sword in the hands of 
the priest and exclaim with all the earnestness 
of your repentant soul, "There is none like 
that; give it me.' 

There is no modem improvement in making 
swords for moral battles. Man's progress in the 



74 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

sciences is not because he has improved but 
because he has employed the laws of nature, 
laws that have coexisted with the world. The 
telephone, telegraph, and incandescent are not 
the result of man inventing electricity. Science 
wins all her conquests by using old swords but 
perfect ones, because they come from the hand 
of God. We need no new religions, cults, or 
creeds. Being man-made they have no excel- 
lence of steel or temper. The emphasis must be 
placed, not upon the theory, but upon the moral 
laws which are just as vital to the spiritual life 
as natural laws are to the development of 
science. These laws are perfect. The Ten Com- 
mandments are incomparable. Not one of them 
is unnecessary but each one vital to triumphant 
living. Add to these the new commandment of 
Christ that we are to love the Lord our God with 
all our mind and heart and soul and strength 
and our neighbors as ourselves, and we have an 
arsenal with which to conquer all the powers of 
earth and hell. 

The world is weary following the ways of men. 
Righteousness alone exalteth a nation. "Back 
to God!" is the war-cry. "There is none like 
that; give it me." 



XI 
SPICED WINE 

In his Songs Solomon referred to a beautiful 
Oriental custom. The bride and bridegroom 
drank from the same cup, that they might show 
the assembled guests then' willingness to hence- 
forth share all the cups of life, whether sweet or 
bitter. To add to the joy of the wedding banquet 
the cup from which the wedded ones were to 
drink would be passed first to the others who 
were seated with them. As it passed from hand 
to hand each guest would drop into the ruby 
wine a gift of fragrant spice, expressing thus 
the earnest wish that every bitter cup of life 
might be brightened and sweetened with the 
spices of good friendship. From the first moment 
of wedded life their loved ones wished that they 
taste of nothing save joy and happiness. In his 
great poem Solomon somewhat alters the 
ancient custom and represents the bride per- 
forming this service of spicing the wine for the 
husband, as much as to say, *T would render 
unto thee only the sweetest, the purest, and the 
best that earth can hold.'* 

One of the greatest needs of to-day is a spirit 

75 



76 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

of willingness to spice the sour wines which 
others are daily compelled to drink. There are 
few greater services to render both God and man 
than to proffer the cup of spiced wine. 

The church as the Bride of Christ should offer 
to him no service that is not sweet and aromatic 
with the spices of sincerity and love. This is the 
only way the world will ever be taken for Jesus 
Christ. The church must offer something better, 
more pleasing, and more wholesom^e than the 
wines that this world has to offer. It is the 
tendency to give to God the drainings from life's 
vintage. We often spend the week in pursuit of 
selfish pleasures, drinking the sweetest wines and 
giving them freely to our chosen companions, 
and then, in hours of worship, give to God the 
cheaper, sourer wines, making religious worship 
unwholesome, acrid, bitter, and nauseous. 

Unless we do away with our acrimonious 
methods and make our services to God more 
aromatic and pleasant, the church is going to 
lose all hold upon her boys and girls. As a child's 
growing body requires sugar, so his awakened 
spiritual powers need that which is sweetened 
with the spices of gladness and whole-hearted- 
ness. 

This is the only way by which the church shall 
get and retain its grip on men of affairs. All 
week long these individuals have been tasting 



SPICED WINE 77 

the acid and the bitterness of earthly struggle 
and competitive ambition. Sunday morning 
comes and they are tired, and nervous, and all 
worn out. What they need is a cup of spices, 
each bit of spice a gift of love. They need to 
have their minds taken away from the bitterness 
and acidity of life and given something that is 
fragrant and stimulating, something that will 
revive and strengthen them for future activity. 
This is the purpose of the church. It is to gather 
from all quarters of the earth all things that are 
good, wholesome, and attractive, and press 
them, as a gift of love, to the lips of every 
worshiper. It is to crowd each service with 
inspiring song, short helpful prayers, warm- 
worded greetings, and enthusiastic handshaking, 
until the silver chalice brims with gladness. 
Bring all your spices into the house of God and 
offer to Christ a pleasing gift. There is no telling 
how much good you can do. Look into the face 
of your Creator whenever you enter his temple 
and pray with an earnest heart: "O Lord, I 
would this day cause thee to drink spiced wine." 
This should not only be the attitude of the 
chiu'ch toward its Lord, but it should certainly 
be the spirit with which it daily faces the world. 
As we confront each individual we should be 
able to say: "I would cause thee, my brother, 
my sister, to drink spiced wine." We should go 



78 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

through hfe so prepared with the spices of good 
cheer that the moment we found one with a cup 
of bitterness we could remove all its disagree- 
ableness before it is pressed to their parched 
lips. We should carry spices for their cups, and 
not pepper for the eyes, or salt with which to 
rub the sores of our enemies. Spices so sweeten 
the cup that men forget their hatred and find 
themselves glad that we are here. 

Give them the spices of a good disposition. 
Our dispositions are not unalterable gifts thrust 
upon us at birth, but are largely a matter of 
cultivation. If we associate with that which is 
sour and crabbed, our dispositions will, of neces- 
sity, assume the same nature. If we live a life of 
goodness, we will most naturally have a sweet 
disposition. The difference between peaches 
and pickles is far more than a matter of spelling. 
Peaches are not pickles, because they absorb the 
sunlight and the sweetness of the soil, until even 
their tartness is delicious to the taste. Pickles 
are not peaches because they absorb only those 
things which suggest and harmonize with salt 
and vinegar. We never think of pickles without 
thinking about vinegar. Their difference is in 
the choice of elements used in building tissues. 
The same thing is true with us. We make our 
dispositions, and because we do, we should be 
lovers of the aromatic spices with which God 



SPICED WINE 79 

has crowded the world. O that those who pro- 
fess to love God would cease shaking pepper into 
others' lives, and begin to put sweet spices of a 
good disposition into cups already too bitter 
with the gall of sorrow and disappointment. 

Give them the spices of a cheerful conversa- 
tion. No good comes from burning the mind 
of the world with the acid of criticism, or dis- 
tressing their lacerated hearts with the story of 
our personal discomforts. Give spices. Instead 
of telling how the rheumatism made the joints 
creak on their hinges, tell the story of how once 
you were able to leap over the fences and how 
you sw^ung from the topmost branch of the old 
apple tree. Instead of telling about the horrors 
of insomnia, and how little you slept that past 
week, and how miserably the morning hours 
wore away, tell about the red bird that sang 
under your window and awakened a thousand 
memories of your childhood, tell how you 
noticed the fresh air of the morning awakened 
symphonies among the dew-laden leaves. It 
is so much nicer to be a candle that gives light 
than a smoky chimney that belches soot and 
cinders. The world always appreciates its 
bearers of good news. Happy conversation is 
within the reach of every one. No matter how 
blind we may be to the blessings of to-day, 
memory holds a box of spices within easy reach. 



80 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

and we can fill our words with a sweetness that 
will cast an undying fragrance. 

It is not difficult to be cheerful when we 
remember that we meet only two classes of 
people, no matter how far we travel, or how long 
we live. The one class consists of those who are 
making failure of life. Each word we speak 
brings to them either the bitterness of worm- 
wood or the good cheer of wild honey. The op- 
portunity to give encouragement to the down- 
cast comes every day. Tired, worn, and jaded, 
they meet us upon every street corner and press 
against us at every assembly. O that they might 
rejoice as they taste the spices we are placing in 
their wine! The other class of people whom we 
are meeting are those who are making success of 
life, and who are very often the most neglected. 
Because they receive worldly honor we think 
them extremely happy, not recognizing their 
loneliness. The world never hesitates to press 
its sponge of vinegar and gall to the lips of those 
who are serving it. 

Several years ago there was a large gathering 
in Calvary Church, New York City, to pay 
tribute to Dr. Edward Washburn. Phillips 
Brooks, Bishop Potter, and many other men of 
distinction met in that magnificent service and 
offered words of praise to the goodness, courage, 
clear thinking, untainted love and unselfish de- 



SPICED WINE 81 

votion of that mighty man. After all had ended 
their words of praise a little woman, dressed in 
black, who had been the companion of Dr. 
Washburn for so many years of married life, 
slowly arose to address the audience. Amid an 
intense silence she repeated over and over again 
these words: **0, if you men loved Edward so, 
why did you never tell him?" WTiat a revelation 
of heart-hunger ! Long years of bitterness when 
all might have been relieved with just a little 
spice, that is readily found and easily bestowed. 
Bring on the spices! Let us be more affec- 
tionate one toward another. The eldest son of a 
large family was kneeling at his mother's death- 
bed saying, "You have been such a good 
mother." The dying woman opened her eyes 
and faintly whispered, "You never said so be- 
fore, John, you never said that before." Let 
this be our motto as we meet all men: "I would 
cause you to drink spiced wine." 



XII 

THE FEVER OF HEALTH 

One of man's richest possessions is the feeling 
of restlessness and discontent that ever pushes 
onward seeking something new. It is the secret 
of discovery. Beholding the sunset, like a 
thousand camp fires flashing their beams upon 
the crimson and purple curtained tents of ever- 
encamping angels, man determined to enter into 
and share their quiet place of rest and luxury. 
Hastening forward, he easily found the hills that 
yester-night formed the mystic camping ground, 
but nowhere would a torn leaf or trampled 
grass-blade betray a single footprint; while, 
looking farther westward than he had traveled, 
he saw the same crimson-and-purple tents 
stretched upon other hilltops bathed with sun- 
set's golden light. Month followed month while 
man continued journeying westward in fruitless 
quest for peace, but in his effort to reach the 
cherished goal he discovered new lakes and 
rivers, hills and valleys, plains and forests, until 
a mighty continent lay ready for his children's 

children to build cities rivaling in power and 

82 



THE FEVER OF HEALTH 83 

splendor the mystic camps of sunset's unseen 
hosts. 

Restlessness and dissatisfaction are the secret 
of invention. Satisfied with their condition, 
China, India, and Africa yield no inventions. 
Their people carry water in flasks of skin, travel 
upon weary-footed beasts of burden, and be- 
queath their children nothing but tradition. 
Such once was all the world until some individ- 
uals of courage and determination caught the 
fever of health. Dissatisfied and restless, man 
became weary of carrying water and would not 
rest until he had perfected the Holly Engine that 
presses a cup of cool water to every thirsty lip 
within the city. Tired of slow travel, he com- 
pelled the locomotive to give fleetness to his 
feet, and the telephone to give rapid transit to 
his voice. Restless because the singer's voice 
must fade in silence, man built the phonograph 
to give the human voice, the frailest of all man's 
possessions, everlasting life. Dissatisfaction 
with things as they are gives invention her rich 
achievements. 

Art follows only in the footsteps of restless- 
ness. Every painting and tapestry hanging on 
palace wall, every anthem that thrills the 
templed throngs, and every melody that wafts its 
sweet cadence upon the trembling, vibrant air, 
exists because some sensitive soul refused to 



/ 



84 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

know contentment until he had given perfect 
expression to the beauty that dwelt within his 
soul. 

Only through the contagion of the divine 
fever can there be any reform. It was only when 
the restless soul of John Howard began to ex- 
press its contempt for the foul floors and vitiated 
air of England's jails and aroused the slumbering 
conscience of an indifferent people that the cruel 
prison systems of the world were changed. Re- 
form in England's colonial policy that made 
possible the unity of Canada and the founding 
of our own government came only when men 
began to chafe and grow restless under unjust 
treatment, and finally found expression in the 
burning, blazing, nervous eloquence of Patrick 
Henry, "Give me liberty, or give me death !" 

Because men were satisfied with things as 
they were, the city slums became deeper, fouler 
depths of misery entombing thousands of human 
beings in inexcusable death-traps, robbing 
parents of hope and childhood of its lawful in- 
heritance of health and goodness. These things 
continued until one poor lad grew divinely rest- 
less. A little immigrant boy of poetic tempera- 
ment and lofty aspirations, by the name of 
Jacob Riis, cried out in protest against the 
injustice of foul air and darkened homes. Rest- 
less himself, he made the city restless, until New 



THE FEVER OF HEALTH 85 

York transformed her tenements, purified her 
slums, and reformed her government until she 
became one of the cleanest cities of the world — 
in many ways a worthy example for the cities 
of the Old World to follow. The restlessness of 
Livingstone redeemed Africa. The restlessness 
of Morris saved China. The restlessness of 
Thobum is working miracles in India. When 
men found it impossible to sit at ease while their 
brothers were in chains slavery disappeared. 
Because men became weary with drunkenness 
and tired listening to the pathetic pleading of 
drunkards' wives and children, an aroused na- 
tion closed the open saloons and placed a ban 
upon the sale of alcoholic drink. Men are now 
becoming tired of war. They believe that the 
world has drunk its fill of human blood. The 
hour for world-wide disarmament has come, and 
rulers must be made to think before sacrificing 
their people's lives. 

Here also we find the secret of mental develop- 
ment. So long as the human mind is satisfied 
with tradition it cannot grow; but let it once 
become uneasy under the deadening power of 
superstition, its very restlessness will make the 
mountains unlock their secrets, the plants yield 
tribute of health-creating medicines, the clouds 
unbosom their mystery, and even the starlight 
becomes a pencil of gold to write upon the tablet 



86 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

of the sky the marvelous story of man's growing 
intellectual power. 

No one of God's gifts is to be valued more 
than this feeling of unrest that he inspires within 
the heart, making us dissatisfied with ourselves 
and our surroundings, and forcing us forward to 
become skillful in discovery, art, invention, re- 
form, and intellectuality. 

But the beneficent influence of health's fever 
does not end here, for it is also the secret of 
spiritual development. We have all experienced 
these seasons of holy manifestation. Our friends 
said that we had the fidgets; the physician 
diagnosed our case as one of nervousness; we 
insisted that we had the blues; but all were 
wrong. The restlessness was a sign of health. 
We were not satisfied with ourselves but longed 
for nobility. The dust-made body was refusing 
to grovel in the dust. The spiritual life was be- 
ginning to assert itself through these tissues of 
flesh. The chrysalis had lost its desire to crawl 
along the ground, for new life within claimed its 
right to rise upon joyous wing and cleave the 
sunlit air. It was not a thing to be despised, to 
mar and gnaw the budding leaf, but something 
to be admired and loved of man, something 
sylphlike to sip from chalices of gold and silver, 
porphyry and lapis-lazuli. The old man of sin 
was dying, and through the power of Christ a 



THE FEA'ER OF HEALTH 87 

new man was coming into life; from now on he 
can never be satisfied with things as they were. 

One of the hopes of the world's salvation is the 
fact that sin never satisfies the soul. Its promises 
are never fulfilled. Its obligations are never met 
at maturity. Men become restless in their sin, 
and through their restlessness are being led to 
God. Here alone can satisfaction be found, for 
only Christ supplies the soul with what it needs 
for the journey set before it. He offers guidance, 
saying, "I am the way." Following him no soul 
has ever been lost amid the bewildering maze of 
sin. He offers sustaining power saying, "I am 
the bread of life" and "I am the water of life." 
The dusty ashes of sin no longer choke, but for 
the hunger there is life-giving bread, and for the 
parched lip there is water. He gives illumina- 
tion, saying, "I am the light," and the terrors of 
darkness and the dangers of the night flee away. 
He offers an open way, saying, "I am the door," 
and through him one passes out of the cramped 
prison house of past sins into untrammeled, un- 
measured freedom. He offers immortality, say- 
ing, "I am the resurrection and the life: he that 
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live." The deadening power of sin loses its 
hold, and one tastes the unspeakable joy of 
hving a life that is life indeed. 

Then be not confounded by the feeling of 



88 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

restlessness that ever creeps upon the healthy 
soul. What a tragedy our lives would be had we 
been satisfied with our first achievements ! How 
terribly pathetic it is to become satisfied with 
ourselves now, while we are so far short of what 
we might be, and so lamentably short of what 
God meant our lives to be! Curb not the spirit 
of restlessness as though it were a fever of death. 
It is health's fever. It is the call of the soul for 
its Creator who longs to lead us into better 
things. 

To-morrow will be a beautiful day because 
to-day is so restless. 



XIII 

THE WISDOM OF THE UNLEARNED 

The pathway of true brotherly love is 
bordered with deformed social conditions which 
must be faced and remedied. Entering the 
temple at the hour of prayer, Peter and John 
had their pious meditations interrupted by the 
appealing cry of a crippled beggar, who was 
crouching helplessly at the temple door. His 
haggard face, his wistful eye, his bony, out- 
stretched hand, pleaded so passionately that the 
singing of the Levites was drowned and the 
temple call to prayer unheeded. The eyes of 
Peter and the beggar met, and Christlike 
spirituahty stood face to face with the practical 
aspect of the world's need. Instantly the great- 
hearted, impetuous Peter took notice of the 
helpless man, whose wan face began to brighten 
with hope. Taking him by the right hand, Peter 
said: "Silver and gold have I none. I cannot 
meet the requirements that you ask, knowing 
that it is not money that you need, so much as 
health and strength, with which to earn a liveli- 
hood for yourseK and for your loved ones. Silver 

89 



90 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

and gold have I none; but such as I have, give 
I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth 
rise up and walk." The cripple did not have 
time to waver, nor to debate, for the warm 
handclasp and the strong arm of the enthusi- 
astic servant of Christ was lifting him to his 
feet and teachmg him how to leap, and run, and 
sing the praises of God. Peter and John felt 
that they could not enter the temple to pray 
until they had proven their right to worship by 
practically meeting whatever part of the world- 
wide social needs chanced, at that moment, to 
confront them. 

But their benevolence was misinterpreted by 
those who should have been the most appre- 
ciative. Overzealous religionists, who usually 
mistake the form for the spirit of worship, had 
tlie two benefactors arrested, accused of violat- 
ing their law concerning the observance of the 
Sabbath day. After a night spent upon the 
cold, damp stones of the inner prison, the two 
disciples were brought before the learned magis- 
trate to explain theu' conduct. 

There is nothing more interesting than these 
unfriendly scholarly investigations of religious 
phenomena, conducted for tlie purpose of secur- 
ing a rational psychological explanation. The 
high priests, the scribes, the rulers of city and 
province were seated in state, when the two 



WISDOM OF THE UNLEARNED 91 

humble followers of the Social Christ, with 
common garb, and net-calloused hands, stood at 
the judgment bar and heard the question : "By 
what power have ye done this?" A more modern 
phraseology of the question would be, "State to 
the Court what is the psychological explanation 
of this purported miracle?" 

It was a critical moment to these judges, for 
scholarship, with much ado, was studying and 
analyzing ignorance. But the Peter of Pentecost 
was not to be dismayed. He knew that the 
service of Christ is not formal but practical, and 
that his conduct in curing a lame beggar was 
more important to God than the observing of a 
thousand man-made forms and ceremonies. He 
knew from his former experience that ignorance 
need have no fear of the scoffer's sneer, or the 
scholar's questioning, when once the heart has 
been fully consecrated to the service of God, 
With confidence they faced the inquirers saying, 
frankly: "The power is not ours. This miracle 
was performed through the power of Christ, 
which you, in your learning, threw aside, and 
which we, in the simplicity of our untutored 
hearts, have accepted as the gift of God." The 
power of Pentecost was with the preacher again, 
and the judges were filled with fear and wonder- 
ment. Against their most earnest desires they 
liberated the men, wondering why they, as 



92 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

learned men, should be influenced by men of 
such untrained intellects. 

While Christianity has always waged warfare 
against ignorance in all forms, and has been the 
leader in founding schools and colleges, the fact 
remains that many of our greatest achievements 
have been wrought by untrained men. God 
often takes the weak things of this world to 
confound the mighty. 

When an unorganized and badly scattered 
people needed a wise ruler, God passed by the 
palace doors and over the seats of learning that, 
in the open fields, he might crown David, a 
shepherd lad. When Jerusalem was a ruined 
city, overgrown with weed and briar, God 
ignored commanding generals and ruling mon- 
archs, to honor Nehemiah, whose conquering 
courage rebuilt the city. When mad with power 
and wild excesses of sin, a mighty nation needed 
restraint, God stepped over the royal houses as 
though they were playthings upon the nursery 
floor, and lifted Daniel, an exile, to become the 
condemning conscience for them who had slain 
their consciences, and to become a radiant hope 
for those who were enslaved and had lost all 
courage. When the time had fully come for the 
kingdom of Christ to be preached to the 
cultured and aristocratic, he chose these two 
men of the fisher-craft, who, though ignorant 



WISDOM OF THE UNLEARNED 93 

and unlearned, made the scholars and statesmen 
dumb with wonderment, while the crowned 
power of the age was humihated, unable to cope 
successfully against the growing faith. 

Christianity, while not encouraging ignorance, 
recognizes what the world often overlooks, that 
learning, in itself, has woeful limitations. When 
rightly employed, mental training multiplies 
one's powers and talents, as the circling moon 
gives strength and swiftness to the rising tides; 
but misapplied book-learning has little value. In 
the crises of life the general information gleaned 
from books counts for but very little. The 
knowledge that water, when reduced in tempera- 
ture to thirty degrees or less, freezes, so that a 
dangerous river is changed into a solid highway 
over which one can walk in safety, is of small 
value to a man who is drowning in the summer 
time, and very few drowning men would call for 
a thermometer to take the temperature of the 
water in which they were sinking. Standing 
beneath a falling wall, no man is going to begin 
to calculate the specific gravity of the falling 
elements or estimate the force of impact upon 
his head. All learning is good, and nothing 
in the line of information should be ignored, 
for, along the more or less narrow line of its 
own application, each truth is of inestimable 
value. Each added truth that one learns pulls 



94j unfinished RAINBOWS 

up the tent stakes of the horizon and widens the 
world just so much, but no man can save him- 
self with learning alone. Success depends, not 
upon scholarship, but upon a spotless love for 
God and a boundless love for man. Herein is 
the wisdom of life, and the weakest man or 
woman may possess it. All men may not be- 
come learned, but all men may become great 
and enthusiastic lovers of their fellow man. The 
little child that bends its arms in fervent hugs 
to show the measure of its affection; the strug- 
gling youth that stops to help a wounded com- 
panion; the widow, fighting against poverty in 
the tenement; the old man, patiently looking 
for the coming day — all these may possess the 
secret of royal living. 

The world will be saved, not by the scholar, 
as a scholar, but by the loving heart; not by 
platitude, but by kindly deeds. Goodness is 
such an easy thing to acquire, that it is within 
the reach of all. A little London newsboy was 
seen to daily follow an unknown man for many 
blocks. When asked by an observer why he did 
so he responded, ''When he buys a paper from 
me, he always smiles, and calls me his boy. He 
is the only one who ever called me that, and I 
just love to see him." Here was a life brightened 
and perhaps redeemed because a busy man of 
wealth took time to say what any one of us is 



WISDOM OF THE UNLEARNED 95 

able to say each day. When King Humbert 
would have lost his nation he saved it, not by 
scholarly exiiortations or startling state papers, 
but by visiting the hospitals of Naples and 
ministering with genuine affection a plague- 
smitten people. It was a task of love that the 
weakest person might be able to perform, but it 
saved a nation for a king. 

The world will be saved. Righteousness shall 
ultimately prevail. The kingdoms of this world 
shall become the kingdom of our Christ. There 
are no failures in God's mighty plans. We may 
vary in our beliefs, and differ greatly as to the 
process by which he shall accomplish his wise 
designs, but this is true: when this world is 
brought ultimately to the feet of Christ, it will 
have been accomplished not by prayer alone but 
by work and prayer, not by the scholar as a 
scholar but by the men, learned or unlearned, 
who have discovered the compelling and trans- 
forming power of a boundless, undying love. 



XIV 

THE STRENGTH OF WEAKNESS 

An old man was once opening the treasury of 
his experience to enrich the young people of 
Corinth. Youth ever needs such a benefactor, 
for life's most difficult problem is to definitely 
determine upon which element or elements of 
life the emphasis should be placed. Like a river, 
life has so many contributing streams of large 
volume that it is difficult to decide unto which 
one we are most indebted for our power. There 
is only one way to ascertain this fact, and that 
is to trace the current of life-power to its source 
and stand, with reverent feet, at its utmost 
gurgling spring. But this task is hard and is 
fraught with danger. What youth, standing at 
the joining of the currents, can tell to a certainty 
which is the real current and which the con- 
tributing stream of influence.'^ Among the most 
pathetic incidents of history are those portray- 
ing some of our richest and most favored sons of 
genius mistaking a contributing element of life 
for life itself and spending their days within the 
narrow winding ways of mediocrity. Youth 
needs the open treasury of the past, therefore 

96 



THE STRENGTH OF WEAKNESS 97 

it is a rare privilege to have Paul thus open the 
treasure chest of his varied and triumphant ex- 
periences and tell us what is the secret source 
of life's richest endowment. Looking over a life 
of many years, covering an intense and diver- 
sified experience, enriched with mental and 
spiritual training, he declared to the young 
people of Corinth that the source of personal 
power is weakness. 

That is the last place in the world that we 
would naturally look for strength, for we have 
always been taught that weakness is the absence 
of strength. To be enduring we believed that 
we should possess the rigidity and firmness of the 
rocks, forgetful that long after the red stone 
walls of Kenilworth have tottered into com- 
plete ruin the fragile ivy, planted by unknown 
hands, will still live to cover the rough, broken 
heap of weather-beaten stones with the graceful 
folds of its swaying branches. We have believed 
that stability depended upon rigid strength, not 
realizing that, in nature, the strong are the most 
fragile, while the weak are the most enduring. 

The source of triumphant living is not the 
adamantine will that refuses to bend or budge, 
but is the will that yields itself to higher power. 
Only when one finds that a feeling of weakness is 
creeping over him, and realizes that, in his own 
strength alone, he is inadequate for the task. 



98 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

does he possess true conquering power. One of 
the best hours of a man's life is when, through 
sickness, toil, or persecution, he feels his physical 
powers giving way, and his soul rises to claim 
the occasion for God and his humanity. Know- 
ing that while he himself is weak, the needed 
power is within easy reach, a man is strong. In 
such a crisis, to become self-confident is to be 
like the hunted partridge which, seeking escape, 
confidently enters the trap set for his destruc- 
tion. Strength comes when, overwhelmed with 
a sense of unutterable weakness, one flings him- 
self at the feet of Christ, and prays as did the 
sinking disciple, "Lord, save me." 

How very true this is in the hours of our 
severe temptation! No man ever sought refuge 
from temptation in self-confidence who, in the 
strain of battle, did not find his fortress crum- 
bling into dust, while he himself suffered humil- 
iating defeat. Simon Peter learned this truth. 
Strong and boastful in his self-assertiveness, he 
stood amid the gathering shadows of the world's 
darkest and most tragic night, and smiled as one 
who gladly greets the dawning of his wedding day. 
He was confident, beyond question, that he 
was equal to any emergency that might arise. 
It was easy for him to boast and proclaim loudly 
what he would do. Beholding the same fast- 
deepening shadows, Christ fell to his knees in 



THE STRENGTH OF WEAKNESS 99 

prayer, and with broken voice and heavy, blood- 
stained sweat, pleaded for his Father to remove 
this cup of suffering. Christ, the everlasting 
Conqueror, prays for escape from trial, while 
Peter, filled with self-assurance, bids the coming 
of the worst with defiant spirit, saying, "Though 
all men should forsake the Master, yet will not 
I." He boasted bravely that he was ready to die 
for Christ. There was a marked contrast be- 
tween the ways these two met the same struggle, 
but the whole world knows the outcome. In the 
presence of trial Peter's strength was scattered 
like heaps of withered autumn leaves. T^Tien he 
was strong then was he weak. Without the 
passing of the cup Christ walked forth strong 
enough to win a world from sin, while Peter sank 
in shame. But when, a few hours later, we find 
the defeated disciple, all alone, in midnight 
darkness, weeping like a little child over his 
weakness, we rejoice, for we know now that 
Pentecost has found its preacher, and the world 
has found a mighty champion for God. 

Temptation is a terrible thing. It is a band of 
armed brigands, storming the citadel of the soul 
to carry away everything that is of value. To 
yield is to have the soul ransacked and burned 
as though by fire. To face it confidently in one's 
own strength is gravest folly. There is only one 
possibility of victory. In that hour of peril. 



100 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

when eternal destinies are at stake, let one feel 
his own weakness, and fall helplessly at the feet 
of Christ, and call with all the earnestness and 
pathos of his frightened soul, "Lord, save, or I 
perish!" and victory shall fill his heart with joy 
and crown his brow with the light of heaven. 

This truth is applicable to all our sorrows. 
There have been hours when we thought best to 
meet our sorrows and disappointments with the 
spirit of a stoic. With clinched fists, tight- 
pressed lips, and dry eyes, we stood, proud of 
our strength, defying sorrow by bidding it to do 
its worst. We insisted that we were not weak 
like others, and that we would boldly bear our 
own burdens. But the end was defeat and un- 
controllable grief. The burden was so much 
heavier and the grief was so much more bitter 
than we had ever expected, that we were crushed 
and overcome. Meanwhile at our side stood one 
frail and weak, whose bloodshot eyes spoke of 
countless nights of grief and anxiety, but whose 
calm face and steady voice assured us that she 
had gained a wonderful victory, and, in spite of 
tempest, had inner calm and rest. How came 
the victory to the frail? Because she was frail 
and knew that she was frail. As headed wheat 
saves its life by bowing passively to the stroking 
of the violent winds, so she bowed low at the 
touch of sorrow. She yielded herself to the will 



THE STRExNGTH OF WEAKNESS 101 

of God. As Mary and Martha, in their hour of 
sorrow and puzzHng questions, forgot everything 
and fell weeping at the feet of their Lord, so this 
woman poured out her prayer of utter helpless- 
ness to God, saying, "Save, Lord, or I perish," 
and in her weakness she became strong. The 
strength that is needed to meet sorrow comes, 
not from self-control, but abandonment to God; 
not from dry eyes, but from tears. 

How true this is of our ministries to our 
brother man ! It is not an easy matter for one to 
enter the Holy of holies of another's grief and 
sorrow, and minister unto them as a true high 
priest. Before the growing work of the church, 
a^ it is beginning to live up to its conceptions of 
Christian social service, many of our strongest 
Christians are becoming faint of heart; in its 
growing work of evangelism they become par- 
alyzed with fright; because they cannot see how 
they can approach and minister to those whom 
they do not know. They tremble, not knowing 
that their very weakness is their source of 
strength. Rash boldness and overconfidence are 
not part of the true Christian's equipment. 
With such a spirit no one should dare to enter 
the sacred inclosure of another's grief. It is only 
when one refuses to trust m human strength or 
wisdom, and, possessed of a spirit of humility, 
goes forward in the name of Christ, that he can 



102 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

work successfully for God. You may feel called 
upon to do works of charity. If so, go forth in 
weakness. Instead of polished speech upon the 
lip, let there be a teardrop in the eye. The 
hungry soul will understand and rejoice that you 
have come. In the hour of some one's sorrow, 
you may be able to give only a tender, silent 
handclasp; but be not dismayed. The mourning 
one will fully understand and thank God that 
he sent you unto him. You may be sent to lead 
some sinful soul to Christ. In weakness your 
words may fail, leaving you nothing to offer 
save a look of love. That is enough. Each sinful 
one will understand, and through the light of 
your loving look will find a pathway back to 
God. Only when we are weak are we strong in 
the service of Christ. 



XV 

CRUMBLING PALACES 

The crumbling of our palaces does not neces- 
sarily mean loss, especially if they be the gro- 
tesque ones built in untutored childhood, or 
those planned in moments of unguarded enthusi- 
asm, or given form by impractical impulse, or 
intended for selfish or sinful pleasure. We have 
never tried to live in the blockhouses built upon 
the nursery floor, neither do we mold our hves 
according to childhood fancies. There can be no 
progress without the compelling power of a well- 
guided enthusiasm, but overwrought enthusi- 
asm is an uncontrollable power bringing moral, 
physical, and financial disaster. The ability to 
yield promptly to righteous impulse is akin to 
genius, but the impulses of an untrained soul are 
the frenzied switchmen who ditch and wreck the 
train that should have the right of way. When 
self-interest means the developing of brain and 
talents to establish a worthy character and 
beneficent influence, making one a constructive 
force in the community, it is not to be despised; 
but when self-interest becomes selfishness, the 
building of a fortified castle in which one lives 

103 



104. UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

at the expense of others, then is the soul smitten 
with leprosy, and the home becomes a pest- 
house, not a palace. A place of sin is never a 
shelter, but a death-trap, its elegance of archi- 
tecture and furnishings making it all the more 
dangerous. There are many palaces unfit for 
habitation. To permit them to decay and 
crumble into nothingness is greatest gain, for to 
live unworthily is not to live at all. 

On the other hand there is a neglect that 
means a helpless, hopeless poverty from which 
no influence or friendship can bring deliverance. 
When once these palaces are permitted to 
crumble we become homeless outcasts, begging 
from a world that begrudges us its crumbs. 
Therefore one must consider, not only the be- 
ginning, but the upkeep of life. 

There is the palace of Character that needs 
guarding. The beginning of the Christian life is 
only "the beginning." Here is the peril of our 
present and very popular conception of church 
membership. A man often feels that all that is 
necessary for his soul's salvation is to go through 
the soulless process of uniting with some reli- 
gious organization, and it matters not which one 
he may chance to choose. "Joining the church" 
is looked upon as taking out a spiritual life in- 
surance, without any thought of paying pre- 
miums through the passing years. Having his 



CRI^MBLING PALACES 105 

name duly inscribed upon the records of some 
church gives a man confidence with which to 
face death, and the coming judgment, not reahz- 
ing that the Church Record will perish in the 
flames of the last day; and that men are judged 
by comparing the records which God has kept 
with the record that each man writes upon the 
pages of his own body, mind, and soul. Preach- 
ers have bigger business at the Judgment than 
carrying their Church Records and appearing as 
counsel for the members of their flocks. They 
must appear at the Judgment and answer for 
themselves. 

Christian living is righteous living, being 
right with God and right with man, in all the 
dealings of daily life. It is not, like vaccination, 
completed in one short operation, but, like 
breathing, an activity that includes every second 
of one's earthly existence. It is not moving into 
a furnished apartment which you can secure by 
making certain payments, but the building of 
the palace of Character. Stone by stone, the 
great structure is erected, its foundation resting 
upon the solid rock, its walls built with God's 
plumb Ime, its turrets and battlements lifted 
high to receive the blessings of the sky. It is not 
built in a day, but requires the unceasing toil of 
all our days, else it will crumble into hopeless 
ruin. 



106 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

Character is not firmly established this side 
the grave. There are no character insurance so- 
cieties. Right living on the part of youth may 
soon give one a reputation of worth, but after 
many years of faithful living have resulted in a 
palace, admired of men, one misdeed may be- 
come a conflagration that will reduce it to ashes; 
one single misspent day may cause the strongest 
palace to crumble and decay. The ruins of 
Kenilworth are beautiful because covered with 
English ivy; for the ruined walls of Character 
there is no ivy of sympathy to beautify, but the 
bleak and barren wreckage stands in ghastly 
hideousness to proclaim to all the world the 
story of the misspent day. Both youth and age 
alike must guard the palace of Character against 
decay. 

There is the palace of Benevolence that needs 
guarding. In childhood we learned the difference 
between the cold hovel of Selfishness and the 
great palace of Benevolence, with its windows 
ablaze with light to guide our footsteps, and its 
hearthstone aglow with welcoming warmth. 
How we feared and shunned the selfish soul, not 
for the lack of gifts, but because, with the 
clear vision of childhood, we beheld the de- 
formity of his crabbed soul ! How we loved the 
dweller of the palace, not for his gifts, but for 
the beauty of his smile, the soft light of friend- 



CRUMBLING PALACES 107 

ship in his eyes, the joy-creating atmosphere in 
which he moved. Then and there we decided 
to mold our lives after the plans of that good 
man, and be benevolent individuals; not spend- 
thrifts, but possessed of rich, red blood, and 
sympathetic hearts ever open to the beauties 
and needs of life. But we soon learn that the 
palace of Benevolence cannot be built with one 
deed of benevolence, no matter how large and 
generous it may be. The gift of some great 
public institution, however worthy and service- 
able to the people, is not enough to mark a man 
as one who dwells in the palace of Benevolence. 
That coveted abode is built, not by gift or gifts, 
but by the generous spirit with which we daily 
and hourly meet the world. Benevolence is not 
a gift, nor series of gifts, but the wholesome, 
generous spirit which we manifest toward men. 
With such a spirit one builds a beautiful palace 
in which to dwell, but one that is very easily 
marred and destroyed. One selfish desire, once 
hardening the heart against another's need, one 
greedy, grasping longing or desire, and the 
palace beautiful crumbles into dust; and they 
who once rejoiced at our coming will turn away 
with the contempt with which all men greet 
un worthiness. 

There also is the palace of Prayer. No earthly 
dwelling is so beautiful as that which one builds 



108 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

for his soul through communion with God. 
Always situated upon the lofty heights, above 
the lowlands of sin and dusty ways of worldli- 
ness, it lifts its towers and pinnacles into a cloud- 
less sky. The view is clear and unobstructed, so 
that one sees the affairs of life in their true rela- 
tions to the great world of which they are a part. 
The struggles of their fellow men are in clear 
sight and therefore observed with sympathetic, 
understanding heart. The sky is close, and 
when the sun is set the stars peer through the 
shadowy canopy, and smile. The atmosphere is 
fresh and pure, made fragrant with the breath of 
heaven, and he who breathes it feels a power 
divine. Nothing is more beautiful than the 
palace of Prayer. 

Nevertheless, the palace may crumble and 
become a hopeless heap of dust. Where once 
stood a vision of spirituality one can see nothing 
but that w^hich is of the earth earthy. A hidden 
sin within the heart, that slyly steals away one's 
love for God; a subtle spirit of worldliness, that 
deadens the soul until it ceases to respond to 
things divine; a gnawing doubt that, like the 
white ants of India, honeycomb the timbers of 
the bravest, strongest souls — all these cause the 
crumbling of the palace. 

The palaces of the soul, however well estab- 
lished, require a watchful eye and careful guard- 



CRUMBLING PALACES 109 

ing. The powers of evil are destroying elements 
tliat beat and pound upon the shelters of the 
soul with destructive fury. But even then, a 
well-built palace need not crumble. He who has 
the Carpenter of Nazareth as his daily Com- 
panion may build for eternity. Keeping the 
sayings of the Master means that the house is 
firmly fixed upon a strong foundation and that 
all its timbers are strongly knit together; so that 
when the floods come and the winds blow and 
beat upon it; when a legion of devils encamp 
about and lay siege upon the soul; when fires 
sweep, and earthquakes work their devastation 
to this planet, these palaces, not made with 
hands, and not constructed from earthly ma- 
terial, the palaces of Character, Benevolence, 
and Communion with God, shall not be moved. 
They shall shelter us here and be eternal in the 
heavens. 



XVI 
THE ECHO OF LIFE'S UNSUNG SONGS 

We are familiar with the echo of life's un- 
finished songs. The unfinished songs of con- 
fidence, sung by the martyrs as they stood upon 
the yellow sands of the Coliseum, looking up- 
ward beyond the soft blue of the Italian sky to 
heights hitherto unseen, have never ceased to 
vibrate through the centuries. The unfinished 
songs of sacrifice and patriotism which were sung 
by our soldiers and sailors who perished in the 
world-wide war are still echoing in the music of 
every wave that laves the shores of every sea. 
We are all familiar with the lingering music of 
life's unfinished songs, but it is well for us to 
consider also the echo of the songs that have 
never found expression in word or tune. 

Each soul is a minstrel whether he wills it or 
no, for God has fashioned a harp for every heart. 
There is a tradition that above the head of 
David's couch there hung his favorite harp. The 
mountain winds coming through the midnight 
silence would stir its strings, awaken the sleep- 
ing lover of song, and bid him weave words of 
love to fit the wind- wrought music. Thus were 

no 



LIFE'S UNSUNG SONGS 111 

the Psalms created. To each individual God has 
intrusted a priceless harp, tight drawn with 
silver chords of love, and sensitive to every 
touch of passing wind and falling sunbeam. So 
delicate are these heart-strings that every event 
of life awakens the dormant music and fills the 
soul with harmonies divine. Behold how sensi- 
tive they are. 

The day has been dull and gloomy and you 
have not cared to go abroad. After a while you 
become reminiscent. As though led by an unseen 
hand you enter a quiet, unused room and lift the 
lid of a quaint, old-fashioned chest. You know 
not why your followed impulses led you there, 
but you are glad that you obeyed the leading, 
for there, resting quietly amid fragrant lavender, 
is a treasured gift that came from a mother's 
hand. It has been lying there for many years, 
untouched and unseen, but how beautiful its 
faded colors, how lovely its wrinkled folds 
placed there by the hands so long since turned 
to dust! and how, out of the dim mists of the 
past, it brings the soft colors and clear outlines 
of a dear, sweet face! There are tears in your 
eyes, but more and better than that, there is 
music in your soul. Every string of your heart is 
vibrant with melody. 

One morning you were ill and did not care to 
go to the office. You were indisposed just 



112 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

enough to enjoy the rich luxury of being waited 
upon, when, suddenly and unexpectedly, your 
eyes rested upon an old-fashioned picture that 
strangely and wondrously stirred your heart. 
For years it had been hanging there with its 
treasured memories, but you had been too busy 
to notice it. How charming its exquisite beauty 
as it greeted you from out its odd, old-styled 
frame. Its colors, mellowed with the passing 
years, carried you back triumphantly to the sun- 
bright days of the long ago, and the soul was 
stirred with music that charmed, and soothed, 
and inspired. 

The harp-strings of the heart are very sensi- 
tive. A finger-print or tear-stain upon the leaves 
of the old family Bible, the frail petals of a 
faded blossom, the sight of a tiny yellow gar- 
ment or baby shoe, a package of letters tied 
with ribbon, or a scrap of paper scrawled by im- 
skilled childish fingers, just little things that no 
one else admires or notices, is all that is required 
to start the music ringing in our hearts. 

To this music the soul always responds with 
a song. This is true even when one's musical 
education has been neglected. The ear may not 
be able to distinguish one note from another, or 
discern the difference between "Old Hundred" 
and "The Star-Spangled Banner"; the individ- 
ual may know nothing about harmony, time, or 



LIFE'S UNSUNG SONGS IIS 

measure, when listening to the music that others 
have given to the world, but his own soul can 
always sing its own melodies. There is no note 
so high in the scale that the soul cannot reach it. 
I have heard the English lark Hft its silver notes 
until they melted into sunshine and fell in great 
billows of joy upon the listening earth. Every 
soul can sing like that. As above the couch of 
David hung the harp awaiting the touch of the 
passing winds, so each heart is a stringed harp 
awaiting the touch of some common event to 
awaken music and set the soul to singing its 
minstrelsies. 

However beautiful these songs, they never 
pass the threshold of the lips. Their sweetness 
surpasses the power of expression. That must 
have been the reason why Mendelssohn wept so 
bitterly at times. With all his marvelous power 
in weaving tones he could not give expression to 
the rapturous melodies which were surging 
through his soul. This also explains why 
Michael Angelo so often gave way to the 
dreariest despondency. Though he try never so 
hard, he could not express upon canvas or in 
marble form the heavenly symphonies that were 
thrilling his soul. The reason that Lord Tenny- 
son stood for such long periods upon the cliffs, 
overlooking the sea, not hearing the call of an 
approaching friend, was that his soul was search- 



114 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

ing through earth and sea and sky, for words 
with which to express the songs his soul was 
ever singing. 

The deepest and most valuable emotions of 
life are always inexpressible. How useless is 
human speech in the presence of the deep feel- 
ings of awe and reverence! I stood with a friend 
upon one of the great heights of the Catskills. 
He was a genial man, and the day had been filled 
with merriment. Rounding a curve, we came 
suddenly to the edge of a great cliff overlooking 
the Hudson valley. At our feet were many miles 
of forest trees mantling the hills and valleys with 
the brilliant coloring of Autumn foliage. We 
could count a score of villages nestled peace- 
fully among the meadows and fields of ripened 
grain. The Hudson River rolled its silver length 
in the distance, while, far, far beyond us, draped 
in blue, we saw the hills and mountains of 
another State. Beholding what, in many re- 
spects, was the most soul-entrancing revelation 
of nature's glory I had ever witnessed, neither 
of us spoke. The moments slipped by with 
slippered feet and the mid-afternoon became 
evening, before either of us broke the silence. 
It is sacrilegious for one to undertake to express 
the holy sentiments of awe and reverence in the 
clumsy garb of human speech. This is true of all 
deep feeling. Standing in the presence of a 



LIFE'S UNSUNG SONGS 115 

bereaved friend, shallow souls can chatter idle 
phrases, but deep, healing, tender sympathy is 
expressed in the silence of a handclasp and un- 
spoken word. Looking into the deep, expressive 
eyes of one whom we love, our lips are silent and 
only the tear-filled eye tells of the song the soul 
is singing. Have you ever been able to tell your 
mother how much you loved her? The real 
songs of the soul are of necessity the unsung 
songs. 

These songs are the real songs, for the soul life 
is the real life. They may never be heard by 
others, but you hear them, and their words never 
die. They echo through the years. There is 
never a moment of thoughtful meditation, never 
a season of seclusion; never a period of sickness 
when the things of the world are shut out and 
one is left alone with the things of the soul; 
never a season of disappointment, or sorrow, or 
bereavement, or heartache, but that the hour is 
made blessed and hallowed with the memory of 
these songs, and lo, while one listens, all earth 
and heaven become vibrant with music and one 
is charmed and soothed with the echo of life's 
unsung songs. While exiled upon the lonely 
heights of Patmos John heard a song that 
thrilled the heaven of heavens, but none save 
the multitude before the throne could learn the 
song. That is easily understood. It was not a 



116 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

song blending the varied experiences of earth 
together into one mighty outburst of love; it 
was the soul weaving all the unsung songs which 
no one on earth had ever heard or could ever 
understand into one great symphony with which 
to praise the God of its salvation. Life's unsung 
songs shall never cease to live in earth and 
heaven. Their echoes are our comfort here, our 
joy forever. 



XVII 
MODERN JUDASES 

The story of Judas casts a dark shadow 
through the sunlight of twenty centuries. His 
deed was more than a betrayal of friendship. 
Lady Macbeth, coming from the chamber of 
death into the candlelight and beholding her 
lily-white hands stained ruby red with the blood 
of murdered friendship, and fearing to wash 
them, lest the ocean's flood should tell to every 
rock-bound coast the blushing secret of her guilt, 
was not half so bad as Judas. This deed was 
more than the betrayal of friendship; it was the 
dark hand of villainy, reaching from behind the 
dark curtains of selfishness, that with the keen 
blade of greed he might pierce the unprotected 
breast of innocence. It was a tragedy that, with 
each decade's growth in love, becomes more 
atrocious in the eyes of men. 

Named after Judas Maccabaeus, one of the 
most illustrious characters of Jewish history, 
good enough and gifted enough to be chosen as 
a disciple, and possessing such integrity of char- 
acter that he was chosen treasurer of the group, 
Judas began his public career auspiciously. For 

117 



118 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

three years he had been associated with Christ 
in the most intimate manner. He had entered 
cities and passed through country places, 
preaching and performing miracles, until return- 
ing with radiant face he said with the other 
disciples, "Even the devils are subject unto us." 
Having been lifted out of his old self, he rejoiced 
in the delights of noble living. Within a few 
weeks he would have been able to stand 
with Peter at Pentecost and take his place 
among the world's beloved immortals. Then 
came the awakening. He had followed Christ 
through the fragrant fields of the Beatitudes and 
under the clear sky of the Sermon on the Mount; 
he had seen Christ, at the sacrifice of rest and 
comfort, change barren lives into beauty, as the 
sun adorns barren branches with clustered fruit; 
and now, as his life was approaching the crisis, 
Judas could see where the road was leading, and 
he became frightened. He saw that the end of 
the Christ-journey was not toward worldly 
triumph, but toward sorrow, not to a palace, 
but a bleak mountainside, not toward a throne, 
but a cross; and he began to think of himself. 
"What shall I do?*' Like one facing a panic he 
stood petrified with terror. Seeing the invest- 
ment of three long years trembling in the bal- 
ance, he did not think it businesslike to follow 
Christ any further. His love for money so 



MODERN JUDASES 119 

blinded his eyes that he could not see the moral 
grandeur of Clirist's program. Angered and dis- 
appointed, he deserted his post, sought the 
seclusion of the night-time shadows to complete 
his plans. Well does the inspired writer add, 
"And it was night." Of course it was night; 
dark, starless, moonless night, for he had 
allowed his love for money to eclipse the Light 
of Life. 

From then on there was only one light at- 
tractive to Judas, and that was the luring light 
of avarice and greed. Seeking for it, he found it. 
Like the red fires of hell it burst into flaming 
stream from the high priest's windows, where 
Arrogance and Lust for Power were plotting 
against the innocent. Rushing toward it, out of 
breath, his hands clutching his garments, his 
brow wet with perspiration, his eyes staring 
madly with greed for gold, he demanded: 
"What will you give me?" Shrewd and crafty, 
these unscrupulous leaders of men knew that the 
language of love and friendship could not be 
understood by this grasper of gain; so they used 
the only language he could now understand and 
wanted to hear — the language of the market 
place; and "they promised him money." 

This is one of the darkest pictures in history, 
its black shadow reaching through the centuries, 
but it does not hang alone in the galleries of 



120 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

death. There are others still making the awful 
bargain of Judas, and gladly sacrificing the 
innocent for the sake of financial gain. 

Behold the unscrupulous real-estate dealers 
who force houses of immoral character into 
clean, residential sections of cities, betraying the 
cause of righteousness, injuring homes, and 
damning the souls of hundreds. Because im- 
morality promises a more handsome and imme- 
diate return for the investment they become 
partners in the exploiting of sin and crime. As 
Judas went into the quietude of the Mount of 
Olives and brought wreck and ruin, so these men 
insidiously lead marauding bands of immoral 
workers into the best communities, well knowing 
that their deed means the betrayal of youth and 
maiden, but refusing to give it a thought, their 
attention fixed only on the increasing volume of 
business. The good name of a city or com- 
munity, the value of innocence, and the sanctity 
of the home are nothing to these modern 
Judases. 

Behold the employers of child labor, who, 
under the disguise of charitably giving employ- 
ment to the poor, are reaping revenues that 
provide them with luxuries at the cost of blasted 
lives. Many of our shops, stores, and factories 
are but presses where the life, hope, vigor, and 
vision of childhood are crushed out in order to 



MODERN JUDASES 121 

fill to the brim the intoxicating cup of extrav- 
agance for people whose own lives are too foul 
and unfit to be used as grapes in their own 
presses^ Daily the bright-faced boys and girls, 
the hope of the nation, are crowded out of the 
public school into the vats. Hour by hour their 
lives are pressed out until, broken in body, 
dwarfed in intellect, incapacitated for works of 
social service, falling far short of the require- 
ments made upon their later years, they are 
thrown aside as useless pomace. The uncon- 
trollable spirit of greed that places money above 
the value of life and happiness and goodness is 
the spirit of Judas. 

Behold the owners of tenement houses, those 
breeding places of filth and sin, where little chil- 
dren are compelled to live and die, or live and 
curse the world. Their only memories of child- 
hood will be those of the crowded alley, foul 
hallways, and darkened corners in which they 
hide in fear. The memory of a mother's face will 
be vague, ever hidden in the darkness and gloom 
in which she spent her days. Why do they not 
have fresh air.^^ Greed. Why do they not have 
fresh water to drink.'' Greed. Why do their 
buildings not have good sanitation? Greed. 
Modern Judases are they all. 

Behold the men who are commercializing 
amusements. Men and women need recreation. 



U2 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

and children must have places to play. The 
human body is not made of harder material than 
the locomotive, that requires rest between its 
trips, or, growing tired, refuses to carry its load. 
Therefore it is necessary to have places of 
recreation and exercise. But where shall the 
children go.^ The best bathing beaches of ocean, 
lake, and river bank are owned by money- 
making syndicates, and the people are compelled 
to pay for privileges which are their own by the 
right of birth and citizenship. More than this, 
since money is the objective, and the people 
must patronize their places, having no other 
places to go, they offend decency by catering to 
the coarse and vulgar element of the community, 
thus becoming places of moral contamination 
instead of places of recreation. This is also true 
of our theaters, moving picture houses, and 
amusement parks. That which is presented is 
very often so imcouth that modesty must hide 
her face. 

The deadening influence of the modern 
movies, their teachings of sex and treatment of 
marriage, is clearly shown in their effect upon 
the actors and actresses themselves. They have 
enacted these parts so often, and lived in the 
atmosphere where these things are discussed as 
the predominating tastes of the people, that the 
unnatural teachings have become their concep- 



MODERN JUDASES 123 

tions of real life until the story of their divorces 
and remarriages has scandalized all decent so- 
ciety. Beside the colonies of moving picture 
celebrities, Salt Lake City and other Mormon 
strongholds seem quite tame. If the moving 
picture has such a demoralizing influence over 
the actors and actresses, who are matured men 
and women, what will be the effect upon the 
growing generations? Already the atmosphere 
of school and playground is vitiated. The evil 
effects are already manifest to every conscien- 
tious Christian social worker. To silence the 
protests of a righteous guarding of the morals of 
the young, the moving picture corporations have 
set aside large amounts to prevent the needed 
legislation regulating censorship. 

The work of these modern Judases does not 
end here, but they insist upon the prostitution 
of the Sabbath day for their ungodly enterprises. 
For the sake of making money they are en- 
deavoring to lead America in the same direction 
Europe has been traveling, and to the same 
tragic fate. Childhood and the Christian Sab- 
bath are being desecrated every hour by these 
Judases whose one question in life is, "What 
will you give me?'* 

It is time for an aroused citizenship to enter 
protest against these evils. We cannot prevent 
Judas from having base desires, nor giving his 



124. UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

traitorous kiss, but we can compel Pilate, the 
officer, to render righteous judgment. Jesus was 
crucified, not because Judas kissed him, but 
because Pilate was a moral coward. Pilate 
washed his hands, declaring himself "innocent," 
but every man in the mob knew that he was 
guilty. We cannot prevent Judas betraying, but 
we can create public sentiment which will com- 
pel officers to reach protecting hand against the 
greed of our modern Judases. 



XVIII 
THE ADJUSTABLE UNIVERSE 

That God should adjust a universe so that all 
of its forces and energies should be at the instant 
disposal of those who, through obedience to his 
laws, lay claim to them, should not seem strange 
when we realize how perfectly we are now 
adjusting our mechanical and social conditions 
to meet the hourly needs of the body. The water 
supply of many of our large cities is pumped and 
propelled by what is known as the Holly Engine. 
Its regulation is perfectly automatic. Without 
any apparent cause, there is a constant change 
in the amount of steam produced. The engineer 
busies himself by oiling the bearings and polish- 
ing the shafts, but seems utterly indifferent to 
the pressure of the steam as it relates itself to 
the varying demands of the great city. The fact 
is that the engineer does not need to concern 
himself with the regulating of the engine, for the 
people of the city regulate it for themselves. 

Whenever a faucet is opened the draft in the 
engine is correspondingly opened, the fires burn 
brighter, the steam is increased, and the action 
of the pumps instantly accelerated. The larger 

125 



1^6 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

the quantity of water needed, the wider the 
drafts, the stronger the fires, the greater the 
pressure of steam, the more active the huge 
pumps that labor to meet the increased demand. 
Quickly close the faucets, stop the outlet of 
water entirely, and the pumps will become in- 
active. So perfect is this adjustment that the 
smallest child, many miles away, may change 
the speed of the engine at will. It is designed to 
meet the needs of every person in the city, 
whether it be but a cup of water to moisten the 
fevered lips of a little child or great streams with 
which to fight the mighty conflagrations that 
threaten the life of the city. 

If man, out of common ore which he digs 
from the hills, can build machinery to meet the 
varying need of his fellow man, should it seem 
such an incredible thing that God, who m^de 
the human soul, could, out of his unlimited, un- 
measured spiritual forces, arrange to instantly 
meet the need of every human soul.? God can 
and God does. The fact is that the whole 
universe is so arranged. There is not a need of 
the soul of man that cannot be immediately 
satisfied, if one puts himself in obedient touch 
with the fixed spiritual laws that control the 
required forces, as, for the thirsty lips, we intel- 
ligently reach out, turn the faucet, and draw the 
cup of water. 



THE ADJUSTABLE UNIVERSE 127 

It is at this point that the learned individual 
who loudly praises himself upon being a prac- 
tical observer of life, takes most positive excep- 
tions and insists that the weakness of the Church 
is this very insistence upon what, to him, seems 
the miraculous. He has not been able to observe 
that the strength of the Church is her belief in 
the laws governing prayer, compliance with 
which instantly brings all the Infinite resources 
of the sky to meet and fully satisfy the needs of 
the soul. The fault is not in God's method of 
procedure, but in the narrow prejudices which 
the critic mistakes for the laws of logic. Let us 
consider the laws governing prayer as revealed 
in an old-time incident. 

Her eyes red with weeping, and her face 
deeply drawn with sorrow, a lonely woman was 
pleading with Elisha for help. Out from dark 
shadows, she was journeying toward deeper 
gloom. She had just buried her husband, on the 
morrow she must journey to the auction block 
where her two sons, her only means of support, 
were to be sold into slavery, to meet the debts 
of her dead husband. She was helpless and 
heart-broken in her poverty. "What shall I do 
for thee.^ What hast thou in the house .'^" asked 
the solicitous prophet. "Thy handmaiden hath 
not anything in the house save" — and she 
faltered — "save a pot of ointment." All her 



128 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

furniture and cooking utensils had been sold to 
help meet her financial obligations. There was 
only one thing left, and that was the jar of 
ointment which every Jewish person kept for 
the anointing of the dead. This was never dis- 
posed of. Then came the command, "Borrow 
empty vessels, and borrow not a few." 

The two boys were set to work. The novelty 
of the situation whetted their curiosity and 
ambition and it was not long xmtil the mother 
announced that there were enough vessels and 
that the doors and windows should be tightly 
closed. Then, with trembling fingers, she opened 
the little jar and began to empty its contents 
into the larger vessels. Three smiling faces bent 
over the open mouths of the jars, when, to their 
wonderment, the little jar had filled every one 
of the larger ones. Now there was no need of 
worry. The prayer had been answered. The sale 
of the oil would more than meet all the demands 
of the creditors. It was wonderful, but natural. 

Prayer is answered only according to the law 
of continuity. There were more than a 
thousand ways in which God could have come 
to the relief of the widow. The prophet's touch 
could have filled the empty vessels to overflow- 
ing, as once a prophet's touch melted granite 
rock into crystal streams of water; his touch 
could have filled the hut with abounding wealth; 



THE ADJUSTABLE UNIVERSE 129 

commiDn dust might have gleamed as jewels; 
unexpected gifts might have been poured forth 
as rain; but they did not. God meets the 
emergencies of life through the law of continuity. 
The way of increase is always yielding what we 
have to the workings of higher laws. The small 
cruse held the secret of the overflowing jars. 
Hunger comes and God asks, "What hast thou?" 
and the husbandman answers, "Thy servant 
hath not anything save a handful of grain." 
Then comes the command, "Take it to the well- 
plowed field, and pour it out." He does so, and 
the field overflows with harvest. For the vine 
that man plants God gives the purple clusters; 
for the seed he sows God gives a loaf of bread. 
Like always produces like, and in prayer is fol- 
lowed the law of increase. What you have saved 
from what you have already owned, determines 
the nature of God's answer to your petitions. If 
your heart hungers for sympathy, take the 
cruse of sympathy and pour it into the empty 
vessel of another's life. The world yields no 
sympathy to the unsympathetic, but never fails 
to return with increase each expression of tender 
solicitude. If you pray for comforting power to 
heal an old wound, take whatever power of com- 
fort you possess, and begin to minister to hearts 
that break. You will find increase that will fill 
every empty vessel of your heart, and gladness 



130 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

shall take the place of sorrow. If you are praying 
for financial aid, consecrate whatever strength 
of brain and muscle you possess to hard, clean 
work, and the return will richly recompense you. 
If you are asking God to make you of service to 
the world, pour out your life into the empty ones 
about you, and your petition will be granted. 
This is the law of spiritual adjustment. Along 
the lines of your own individuality will God pre- 
pare you for the larger task to-morrow. 

We must also remember that the increase is 
determined, not by divine Limitations, but by 
our own capacity. The command to the widow 
was, "Borrow empty vessels, and borrow not a 
few.^' God placed no limitations, but, rather, 
gave urgent command to plan for large things. 
She could have borrowed a thousand empty 
vessels and a thousand vessels would have been 
filled. Her blessing was determined the moment 
she said to the boys who were securing the jars 
from the excited neighbors, "That is enough, 
you need not borrow more." That moment she 
determined the amount of answer her prayers 
would receive. The oil ceased to flow when she 
had reached the limit of her preparation. What 
a tremendous truth! Our growth and spiritual 
attainments are unlimited so far as God is con- 
cerned. The possibility of development is un- 
limited so far as this world is concerned, for 



THE ADJUSTABLE UNIVERSE 131 

empty vessels and empty hearts are everywhere. 
Our growth is limited only by the breadth of our 
sympathies and the scope of our interests. 

Borrow empty vessels, and borrow not a few. 
What a challenge to the church of the living 
God! Begin to think and plan in big terms. 
^'Not ajexoT These are the words of One who 
thinks in numbers large enough to include all the 
grains of sand in all the oceans and all the stars 
of the universe. Count the forest leaves and the 
grass-blades and raindrops, and then ask your- 
self what God means when he says '^rwi afew.^^ 
May the Christ of social service show the church 
of to-day that her power is limited only by her 
vision of her opportunity. 



XIX 

SEEING LOVE 

The value of life is measured by the power of 
vision. The savage, tramping the diamond 
beneath his feet, and clinging to tooth and claw 
of the wild animals he has slain, represents a 
very narrow, restricted life, for he possessed a 
narrow vision. Beholding fruit-bearing trees, he 
saw only the crab and wild cherry of bitter taste. 
Looking across the open fields, he saw only the 
wind-tossed, tangled grass whose matted meshes 
made slow his travel. Along the wayside he saw 
only the daisy, and the thorn-mass of the wild 
rose bush forming a convenient place in which 
to hide while making observations. Because in 
the crab he could not see the possibilities of the 
Northern Spy, and because in the wild cherry 
he could not see the luscious Oxheart, his travel 
lacked refreshing fruit. Because in the tangled 
grass he could not see the gleaming gold of 
ripened grain, he had no food in time of famine. 
Because the weedlike daisy did not suggest the 
chrysanthemum, and the wild rose foretell the 
American Beauty, his pathway was common- 
place. 

132 



SEEING LOVE 133 

Following the savage came those of wider 
vision, and soon the fields assumed the golden 
vesture of the ripened harvests, the hillsides 
became rich with luscious fruit, and life's path- 
way was fringed with beauty. 

Each individual makes his own universe, 
using only, out of the vastness of God's pro- 
vision, such things as he has eyes to see. In the 
broad, open, western plains, with far-extending 
horizon and translucent sky bedecked with bits 
of light to lure the seeing soul to heights heroic, 
lives one whose universe is no wider than his 
daily task, and whose zenith has never ascended 
above his hat-crown. Careless in observation, 
his universe is scarcely larger than the dug-out 
in which he crawls at night to sleep. Dwelling 
in a dark room of the crowded tenement, bound 
by the cords of sickness to a sufferer's bed of 
pain, lies one who knows nothing of the majesty 
of wind-swept fields, or vastness of the star-lit 
sky, but whose careful observations have made 
a zenith high enough to overarch the throne of 
God, and a horizon wide enough to include 
every need of the human soul. 

The richness of life depends largely upon how 
many of the things of life which ordinary peo- 
ple call commonplace can be crowded into the 
range of vision. The man possessing most of 
earth is not necessarily a landowner, but he who. 



134. UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

whether rich or poor, learns to observe and 
appreciate the things about him. Christ never 
owned a foot of land. Standing in the dusty 
highway, worn and weary by countless deeds of 
sacrificial love, he exclaimed: "The foxes have 
holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but 
the Son of man has not where to lay his head." 
He was poverty-stricken, yet, in all the history 
of the world, never was one so rich as he. For 
him every lily held a golden casket filled with 
an unmeasured wealth of inspiration. For him 
the birds winged their way from heights celestial 
to sing their songs of divine forethought. Each 
color of the sky was a prophet proclaiming the 
things of God. Speaking to his disciples, men 
who would necessarily remain poor and home- 
less, he said : "Blessed are the meek [those who 
are not looking for thrones of authority and 
power, but who, in humble state, learn to see the 
divine vision], for they own the earth." 

I know such an one. A laborer in the field, he 
spends his life toiling for the one he loves, living 
in a rented cottage, faring on common food, 
dressing in coarse-woven garments, and yet 
possessing untold wealth. With blistered feet 
and sweat- washed brow, I have seen him coming 
home, smiling with beaming tenderness, as he 
carefully held in his calloused hand the frail, 
pink petals of the first spring beauty he had 



SEEING LOVE 135 

found blooming by his way. He never owned 
anything in particular, yet there was nothing in 
the universe that he did not possess and enjoy 
with rapturous heart. He knows that the voice 
of God is heard, not only in the roar of turbulent 
cataract, or reverberating peal of the majestic 
thunder, but also in the bog and quagmire. 

"For in the mud and scum of things, 
There's always something, something sings." 
He possesses a wealth that is indestructible. 
When one gazes so intently upon a flower that 
he beholds it as it really is, he has blessed the 
flower with immortality and his soul with an 
unfading beauty. The moment he truly beholds 
it, God transplants it to his soul, where it can 
never die, but live and bloom forever and for- 
ever. 

Christ came to enrich man's experience by the 
process of extending his range of vision, teaching 
him that what meekness does for magnifying 
his conception of the natural world, piety does 
for the soul's conception of the spiritual world. 
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall 
see God," and afterwards adding, "God is love." 
As humility gives one possession of the earth, 
purity gives one vision to behold the divine 
mystery of love. 

One of the secrets of Christ's triumphant place 
in history was this vision of purity that enabled 



136 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

him to see the redeeming goodness in the hearts 
of the world's outcasts. Christ could see love, 
therefore, when the pious priests were sitting 
with folded hands waiting for something to 
transpire that was worthy of their attention, he 
was busy in city street and country lane seeking 
to save that which was lost. He could see love, 
therefore when the self-righteous churchman, 
through prejudice, was blind to his neighbor's 
need, he was toiling in the service of the loving 
heart. Busy men and women could see nothing 
in childhood, while Christ, with purity of heart, 
could look down upon these little ones, and, 
seeing the love that bubbles up in baby hearts to 
overflow in kisses, smiles, and laughter, lifted 
them to that high throne where value is meas- 
ured only in terms of love. The pious ones saw 
the raving demoniac standing amid the desola- 
tions of the tombs, and felt that he was too far 
gone to help. Looking deep within this poor 
man's heart, Christ saw his innate love for home, 
and never stopped until he had brought him into 
subjection to his words of power, and sent him, 
well and happy, to his home and family. 

The zealous religionists saw only evil in the 
poor woman who, escaping the rough grasp of 
her captors, was crouching at the feet of Christ, 
fearful and ashamed to look upward. Looking 
into her heart he saw less sin than love — love 



SEEING LOVE 137 

that was deep, and piire, and changeless, as only 
a woman's love can be; therefore, instead of 
killing her because of sin, he forgave her because 
she loved, and then bade her go and live the 
life triumphant. 

Men accustomed to the scenes of crucifixion 
were not stirred when one of the crucified 
uttered a prayer for pardon. It was a common 
occurrence and put down as one of the strange 
expressions of loneliness; but to Jesus it was 
all important. Looking into the heart of the 
dying thief, Christ saw a worth-while love for 
that which was good and of finer quality, there- 
fore he astonished even those who knew him 
best by lifting him out of sin and taking him 
with him to paradise. 

Living triumphantly necessitates one possess- 
ing the vision of purity, without which one can- 
not see God. Mother holds the preeminent 
place in every life, because her true living has 
kept her vision clear, and she sees the good that 
lies deep within the hearts of her children. Her 
son may beteome an outcast in the sight of 
others. Filled with iniquity, and helpless in the 
terrible grasp of passion, he may have lost faith 
in himself and says : "There is no hope for me." 
The world hears, and readily agrees, and says 
that the young man is hopeless. But not the 
mother. To mother there is always hope. Her 



138 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

boy must not be thrown away, for he is of in- 
finite value. She never notices his sin; she sees 
only the soul that lies hidden like a jewel be- 
neath the rubbish of his transgressions. Seeing 
the love within his soul which others could not 
see, because they lacked the necessary love to 
see, her vision became the power that not only 
defies but completely changes public opinion. 
Because she loves much, she redeems and saves 
him, and compels the community to accept him 
as one who has wandered away, but has come 
back to the Father's house. Blessed are the pure 
in heart, for unto them is given vision to see 
good in every one, and to behold their Lord in 
every event of life. 



XX 

THE DIGNITY OF LABOR 

There is no liberty without toil. To enjoy 
the freedom of the sunshine, the germinating 
seed must lift and throw aside the clod which 
outweighs it a thousandfold. Before the blos- 
som can unwrap its tinted petals in the sunlight 
it must, with the w^armth of its own healthy 
growth, melt the wax that seals it in its winter 
sepulcher, and with its increasing strength tear 
away the rough bud-scales and hurl them to the 
ground. The oriole wings its way and fills the 
afternoon with song, only, after earnest effort, 
it has liberated itself from the imprisoning shell. 

Toil is the golden key which God gave the 
human race, that it might find escape from the 
self-inflicted slavery of sin. "In the sweat of thy 
face shalt thou eat bread" was not a curse pro- 
nounced by an offended Deity, but Love's 
whispered secret of escape from harm. Standing 
amid the WTeck of a sin-torn paradise, man 
looked through the open archway of these six 
words — "In the sweat of thy face" — and saw 
the possibilities of a world-wide Eden. Behold- 
ing the fruit begin to fail, and the greensward 

139 



140 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

become tangled with brush and bramble, Fear 
said: "You shall die of hunger." "In the sweat 
of thy face" revealed broad acres filled with 
health-giving ripening grain and orchards 
laden with luscious fruit. Beholding the lakes 
become stagnant, and the river beds becoming 
dry and parched, Fear said: "You shall perish 
of thirst." "In the sweat of thy face" revealed 
vineyards adrip with purple wine, and desert 
lands abloom with beauty because man would 
learn to train the mountain streams to follow 
where he led. Yea, more, "In the sweat of thy 
face" opened a pathway through which Hope 
ran to find salvation from the deadly power of 
sin. Coming back, with face aglow, that bright 
clad Angel bade man first to give his strength 
in building an altar on which to offer heartfelt 
thanks to God, who had made the human hand 
with which to toil and rebuild paradise. 

Happy and fortunate is the man who learns 
to do his daily stint of work with a cheerful 
heart. To him shall be the joy of understanding 
that the ordinary duties of life are not burdens 
sent to crush him to earth, but blessings through 
which he is to work out his own salvation. 

Behold how man's labors have redeemed the 
world from barrenness. Soft, yielding swamps 
have become hard-paved streets of famous 
cities, over which the unappreciative multitudes 



THE DIGNITY OP^ LABOR 141 

walk or ride in perfect comfort. Where once the 
heated winds blew the drifting sands to-day the 
gentle zephyrs fan the rich, green meadows. 
Where once the untrained, tangled vines broke 
down the struggling tree upon which they clung, 
the vineyards yield their purple clusters, and the 
orchards give forth their wealth of sweet and 
luscious fruit. Where once the wild weeds threw 
their choking pollen to the wind, the aster, rose, 
and proud chrysanthemum wave upon graceful 
stems and toss their pretty petals to and fro. 
W^here once the savage stretched his tents of 
skins, brown-stone mansions lift their open 
portals in invitation to the weary sons of toil. 
By the sweat of man's brow, by the toiling 
of the multitudes, we are saved from desola- 
tion and made to dwell securely among the 
gardens. 

Toil saves from sickness. Without the putting 
forth of physical effort all men are weaklings. 
To be a producer, to change the strength of 
brain and muscle into that w^hich is of value to 
his fellow man, is not only necessary if he would 
play his part in the great social mstitution of 
which he finds himself a part, but it is necessary 
for his own mental, physical, and spiritual sal- 
vation. Grinding out his days in unceasing 
industry, many a man curses his lot and wishes 
earnestly for idleness, not knowing that toil is 



142 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

the making of a man with strong muscles, firm 
flesh, large lung capacity, and good digestion, 
for toil forces the blood in rapid circulation. 
Honest toil is the best tonic. When asked what 
was the secret of his good health, a great states- 
man responded, "Hard work." Overfed, full of 
gout, and ill humored, a certain man of ease 
requested a celebrated physician to prescribe 
for him. ''Live upon sixpence a day, and earn 
it," was the advice. Over one half of the invalids 
of the world could be almost instantly cured, if 
they would concentrate their attention, and 
direct all their strength, in carrying forward 
some worthy enterprise. Caring for a garden is 
a good preventive for consumption. Labor 
means exercise, exercise means health. Common 
toil is God's prescription by which we are to 
work out our salvation from many days of sick- 
ness and depression. 

Labor preserves us from needless sorrow. 
Imagine the condition of Adam leaving Eden 
with all his faculties save that which would 
enable him to concentrate his energies upon 
some worth-while task — with the power to think 
and ponder over the hardships of his fallen 
situation; with the marvelous power of memory 
to recall his faded days of gladness; with the 
power of a good imagination, to paint fairer, 
brighter pictures for the futurcj, and yet with- 



THE DIGNITY OF LABOR 143 

out the power to organize these faculties for 
action, thus having no force of character with 
which to achieve. Such Hfe would be worse than 
death, no matter what evils death might bring. 
But through the gracious promise of the sweat- 
washed brow man found surcease for sorrow in 
attempting to build a better garden for himself 
and little ones. There is no happiness save that 
which results in using one's strength and talents 
in honest endeavor. Idleness breeds discontent, 
worry, and fear. It adds a thousand pangs to 
every grief and sorrow. The most unhappy and 
therefore the most unfortunate people in the 
world are those who have the financial resources 
to sit in idleness and nurse their grief. Better 
by far be the poor woman who leaves her dead, 
and goes to scrub the floors of a public building, 
for in her honest toil she finds a healing, com- 
forting touch. Toil makes one forget his grief, 
soothes him with a gentle hand, and permits the 
grace of God to heal the wounded soul and 
broken heart. 

Labor is a strong tower that shields one from 
the onslaughts of temptation. It is the idle hand 
that Satan seeks. One half of our incarcerated 
criminals owe their position to the fact that they 
refused to accept the protecting power of toil to 
keep them in the way of righteousness. Having 
nothing to do, they fell in with evil companions. 



144. UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

Having nothing to do, they partook of ques- 
tionable amusements. Having nothing to do, 
they followed the evil leading of their passions. 
Having nothing to do, sin and disgrace made 
them easy captives. One way of salvation is to 
escape from temptation, and one of the best 
ways to escape temptation is to be so busily 
occupied with clean, honest, manly endeavor, 
that the devil has no access to the mind with 
either spoken word or secret thought. Work out 
your salvation from temptation. 

Labor may also contribute largely to the de- 
veloping of Christian character. There would 
be no backsliding in our churches if those who 
profess the name of Christ would engage in his 
great enterprise of saving and redeeming the 
world. The growing spirit of indiflFerence, that 
is paralyzing so many of our religious activities, 
could not be, had men not become idlers in the 
Kingdom. Business men look upon the church 
and say that it is weak because it has no pro- 
grami This is true. We lacked a program, not 
because we had no program, but because we 
refused to follow the one that God gave us. 
The church is far from being dead. Those 
who have kept true to their Divine Lord, and 
have humbly, but earnestly worked his works, 
have been saved from all these temptations to 
sin and worldliness, and their ardor to-day is 



THE DIGNITY OF LABOR 145 

brighter than on the day they first gave their 
hearts to Christ. 

Then let us get to work. Labor cannot save 
us from the penalty of sin. Nothing save the 
grace of God can do that for us, but it can save 
us from barren surroundings, from much of our 
sickness, from the deadening influences of sor- 
row, from the power of many of our most 
dangerous temptations, and aid us in spiritual 
development. Work with a good will. Let no 
man laugh you out of its benefits. Say to the 
world, "Yes, I am a laboring man." Let no 
blush come to your cheek, unless it be because 
you are not a better and more earnest workman. 
Labor with the knowledge that while you are 
at your task you are ranked with the mightiest 
and most illustrious characters of the world. 
Labor adds to dignity. Hard, honest work gives 
self-respect. Toil saves one from the life of a 
parasite, enabling him to pay his own way, at 
the same time leaving the world brighter and 
richer because of his toil. The richest jewel that 
ever adorned the brow of man is not in the 
King's crown. It is the beaded sweat that 
stands upon the tanned forehead of an honest 
laborer. Wear it with the dignity with which 
a king wears his crown of gold. In the light of 
God's approving smile it will pale and make in- 
significant the crown jewels of all the nations. 



XXI 
ABOVE THE COMMONPLACE OF SIN 

Individuality is one of God's ways of ex- 
pressing his greatness. His voice penetrates the 
centuries like the sound of silver bells, but there 
is never an echo. No duplicates are ever found 
among the works of God's creative power. He 
gives his gifts unto the world with boundless 
generosity, but through the centuries no single 
gift has ever found its counterpart. Everything 
coming from the hand of God is original, unique, 
entirely dissimilar to anything else in the realm 
of nature. No two oak leaves are alike. They 
may be cut from the same pattern, so that, 
no matter where you find them drifting in the 
winds, you instantly recognize them, saying, 
"These are oak leaves"; yet, of all the millions 
of leaves that have unfolded upon branches of 
the oaks of countless ages, no two have been 
identical in size or form or in the delicate 
tracery of the tiny veins which are as delicate as 
hoarfrost, yet strong as leaden pipes. 

God never duplicates. The wild rose is a 
simple flower, possessing but five petals, held 
securely in the golden chalice of pollen-laden 

146 



COMMONPLACE OF SIN 147 

stamens. Nothing could possibly be more liable 
of duplication than this quaint flower of simple 
garb, yet of all the wild-rose blooms gathered by 
lovers' hands and pressed to maidens' lips, of all 
the wild-rose blooms that grace the old-fashioned 
gardens and trellis the fences of the country 
roads with their picturesque, sublime simplicity, 
no two are alike. God so respects the pretty 
things about which human sentiment revolves 
that no two are cast from the same mold. Con- 
sider the blossom that you once kissed, and 
pressing, stored away. It is hidden in a secret 
place, intended for no eyes save your own, and 
viewed only through the clear tears that memory 
revives. Guard it with the tenderest care, for 
God will never make another blossom just like it. 
He respects the tender affections of your heart 
that chose this blossom from a lover's hand 
to be the sweetest, fairest blossom of your 
life. 

When a mother stoops and plucks a blossom 
from her baby's grave, covers it with mingled 
tears and kisses, and puts it away between the 
leaves of the family Bible, thus binding in one 
cover the sweetest sentiments of this world and 
the best hopes and aspirations of a better world, 
she does a beautiful thing, and our heavenly 
Father so honors her love and reverence for her 
precious dead that, though a thousand centuries 



148 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

come and go, he will never make another blos- 
som just like that. 

We love all mountains because of their rugged 
strength and majesty, yet no two mountains are 
alike, for to the mountains God has given 
personality. The Rockies stand like naked 
giants with knotted muscles ever ready to 
grapple with storm3 that smite their rugged 
sides, rejoicing, like strong men, at the ease with 
which they break the strength of their adver- 
sary, and hurl the whirlwind, like a helpless 
zephyr, into the mighty chasms at their feet. 
The Alps are like a procession of kings, be- 
jeweled and berobed for coronation day. To see 
the Alps is to have a holiday and have one's soul 
thrilled with boyhood's wondernient and praise. 
The Catskills are a languid group of charming 
country folk with whom you can sit and chat, 
and feel the magic wonderment of childhood 
creeping through the soul, as you listen to 
quaint voices repeat their myths and legends. 
No two mountains are alike, for God likes ver- 
satility in heaped-up piles of rock as much as in 
fluttering leaves and blooming flowers. 

No two sunsets are alike. The hanging tap- 
estries of the west may be woven in the same 
looms of mist, and dyed in the same vats of 
scarlet, purple, red, and orange; they may be 
laced with the same golden strands of unraveled 



COMMONPLACE OF SIN 149 

sunbeams; and their drapery inay reveal the 
self-same angel touch, yet no two sunsets are 
alike, each having its own individuality, and 
living forever as a master painting to beautify 
the walls of memory. Well do youth and maiden 
stand with clasped hands as they face the sun- 
set. Let them feast upon its gorgeous beauty 
until their hearts are filled with light and love, 
for they shall never see another sunset just like 
that. Returning to the valley's old familiar 
paths, where they shall walk together amid their 
mingled lights and shades, they shall rejoice 
through many years because of the brilliancy of 
that one sunset which God made for them, and 
for them alone. 

This love for originality is seen in the play of 
the wild waves' crest whose molten silver falls 
into beads and necklaces and pendants of un- 
equaled workmanship to fill the unseen jewel 
caskets of the deep. 

What is true of the natural world is also true 
of man. Consider the variations of the human 
face. Reflecting upon the limited number of 
features, one is amazed to think that such an 
infinite combination of facial forms and expres- 
sions can be created. There are only two eyes, 
two ears, one nose and one mouth, and yet 
out of that small combination, behold what God 
hath wrought! From the soft, pink rosebud of 



150 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

a baby's smiling face, looking with wistful 
wonderment at a newly found world; through 
all the charming sweetness of maiden's cheek 
and love-laden eyes; through all the grandeur 
of the hero's chiseled features; through the glory 
of motherhood smiling affectionately upon her 
little brood; through manhood making battle 
for home and righteousness — through all these 
until, at last, you behold the unequaled beauty, 
majesty, grandeur, and dignity of old age, no 
two countenances are alike. 

The glory of God is revealed through individ- 
uality. No two persons are alike in form or 
feature, gift or grace. No two minds have 
exactly the same characteristics. No two souls 
look upon life from identical viewpoint, so that 
each one varies in his conception of events and 
expression of art and letters. A king wears the 
crown of his predecessor, but for each brow God 
has fashioned the fairer crown of individuality. 
Men, as God made them, are not pegs to be 
placed in holes, but kings, to sit upon thrones 
and rule kingdoms all their own. "Before I 
formed thee in the belly I knew thee," are the 
words of Jehovah when he wished to impress 
Jeremiah with the infinite care with which he 
had been prepared for a noble work. 

To endeavor to reshape this divinely ap- 
pointed life and mold it after an earthly, man- 



COMMONPLACE OF SIN 151 

made pattern is the height of folly, yet this is 
the demand of very much of our modern social 
life. Society employs a system of repression, 
the subduing and crushing of deep emotions, and 
substituting a shallow artificiality. It curbs all 
naturalness in development and demands a con- 
formity to certain rigid molds in which every 
word, gesture, thought, and impulse must be 
cast. Instead of employing the art of expres- 
sion, permitting the deep feelings to find normal 
outlet, and allowing the salutary unfolding of 
individual strength and grace, they check and 
curb a^d repress until the beauty and normalcy 
of life is gone. Our present system of society 
custom and usages cannot produce great char- 
acter. 

Failing to recognize individuality as the 
universal plan, many educators mistake their 
function, endeavoring to mold men according to 
their conceptions rather than instructing men. 
Instead of leading the mind away from the 
narrow cloister of tradition, form, and cere- 
monialism, into the open air where it can func- 
tion normally, and unfold its strength and 
beauty in perfect individualism, many intellec- 
tual leaders continue the practice of pitilessly 
dwarfing minds and stunting souls. 

Sin also leads to the commonplace. Realizing 
that man's strength lies in developing those 



152 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

characteristics that mark personality, the arch 
enemy of the soul is ever endeavoring to destroy 
them. He tempts to sin, knowing well that there 
is no other agency so powerful in destroying 
individuality. Sin never lifts men upward to- 
ward lofty heights but always levels downward. 
It knows no royalty of character, so it tears 
down thrones, casts man's crown aside, blurs the 
eye, palsies the nerve, blotches the countenance, 
deadens the brain, hardens the heart, and makes 
its victim a member of the common herd. Sin 
is not error; it is poison that stunts the growing 
aspirations, dwarfs the spiritual nature, lowers 
spiritual vitality, and completely destroys all 
the royal gifts of God that would distinguish one 
in character and achievement. 

Therefore righteousness must be preached as 
never before. Only through virtue can one lift 
himself above the commonplace and his individ- 
uality reach its maximum power. Wrongdoing 
destroys while right living makes possible the 
complete development of all the noble faculties 
of the soul, permitting one to experience the 
fullest possible realization of life. Men must not 
be repressed by the foolish processes of a mis- 
guided social, educational, or evil custom. 
Righteousness must be preached that youth may 
know the freedom of goodness and the joy of 
righteousness. As birds greet the dawn, by 



COMMONPLACE OF SIN 153 

rising on rapturous wing and filling the blue with 
exultant song, let youth and maiden greet the 
coming day with gladness as they rise above the 
commonplace of sin. The Divine plan for their 
lives must not be marred by sin or foolishness. 
The uniqueness and originality of God's plan 
are the secrets of success. The joys of righteous- 
ness are too valuable to exchange for the misery 
and heartache of a wasted life. 



XXII 
THE INVESTMENT OF A LIFE 

The problem of investment provides much of 
the romance as well as the tragedy of life. The 
fascination of expending one's energies or posses- 
sions in legitimate undertakings holds all men 
spellbound, whether it be the peasant investing 
in seed for the coming harvest, the newsboy 
buying his bundle of papers for the evening 
trade, or the merchant purchasing wares against 
the changing styles and fitful customs. The 
investment proving good furnishes the joy and 
romance of existence. The investment proving 
bad causes the tragedy that shatters the brain, 
breaks the heart, smolders the homefires, and 
sends multitudes reeling and cursing into the 
darkness. 

All men are investors. Some of them invest 
their brain. Finding that God has honored them 
with an intellect capable of development, they 
have closely applied themselves to study and 
research, until the meanest flower enlarges itself 
into an Eden where each petal vein becomes a 
winding pathway leading to fountains of nectar 
that ever sport and play amid the golden pillars 

154 



THE INVESTMENT OF A LIFE 155 

and tapestry of stamen and pollen. They study 
until oak trees become mighty ships, iron 
fashions itself into sky-scrapers, forked lightning 
becomes a servant of the humblest child, sun- 
beams become physicians, stars become pilots, 
and the sky a playground in which the mind 
leaps from world to world and wheeling con- 
stellation to wheeling constellation. Very rich 
indeed are the dividends coming to him who 
invests his brain against the world's ignorance 
and mysteries. 

All men are investors. Some men invest their 
bodies. They bend their back to the burden 
until the blood vessels stand out upon their 
temples like silken nets. They give the strength 
of their arms to the hammer and drill until the 
flinty chff becomes broad highways beneath 
their feet. They toil until mountains become 
winding corridors leading to chests of silver; 
valleys bloom with harvests, and frail cocoons 
become silken robes. They toil, earning divi- 
dends of daily bread, a happy home, and the 
consciousness that the world is better for their 
toil. 

All men are investors. Esthetic in tempera- 
ment, some invest a love for the beautiful. They 
find rhythm in swaying tree branch, harmony in 
the moving of winds, music in chirp of crickets, 
symphonies in the carol of birds, poetry in 



156 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

gleaming lights upon the water, visions of glory 
in the morning and evening sky. They adorn 
our cities with temples, fill our homes with im- 
mortal songs, transform white marble into im- 
mortal shapes, and fill our galleries with visions 
of sunsets that never fade, trees whose leaves are 
never driven by the November winds, children 
who never grow up, and family circles unbroken 
by death. Dividends surpassing belief belong 
to these true and faithful lovers of the beautiful. 

All men are investors. Some men invest their 
^ift for business. They concentrate their 
energies on the art of trade until gigantic ships 
cut the ocean waves, steel rails join nations and 
continents, wire threads bind home to home, 
keeping each ear within instant reach of loved 
one's voice, refrigerator cars that bring the fruit 
of the tropics to the Christmas table, and means 
of transportation that finds a world-wide sale 
for the handiwork of the humblest toiler. All 
honor to such men! Nations do not coin cur- 
rency for business. Business is the mint whose 
products fill the coffers of the nations. 

All men are investors. Some invest their 
heart's affections upon things divine. Their ears 
are closed to evil and they know not concerning 
things that blight and blast, scorch and con- 
sume the soul. Their eyes are closed to the 
suggestive, therefore evil finds no lighted path- 



THE INVESTMENT OF A LIFE 157 

way to their imagination. Their hands are held 
firmly and will not touch that which contam- 
inates. Their lives are like unto that of the 
Lord Jesus, and therefore they are the children 
of freedom. Their words drop like the dew, each 
crystal drop reflecting the heavens toward which 
they journey. Their smiles are like unto sun- 
beams upon harvest fields, making the grain 
sweeter of kernel and more golden of husk. 
Their voices melt with tenderness as ripe 
grapes drip wine. Their opinions are permeated 
with charity as ripe fruit is filled with fragrance. 
Their coming is like that of a messenger from a 
friendly king. 

Each man is an investor, whether he invests 
his intellect for education, his body for physical 
betterment, his aesthetic nature for art, his busi- 
ness sagacity for prosperity, his heart for the 
fellowship of God, receiving benefits and meet- 
ing his honest obligations to the world. Honesty 
demands that each individual should be such an 
investor, investing himself and all that he 
possesses, for he who refuses to do so robs his 
fellowman. For such hell is a moral necessity. 
He who refuses to yield himself to the plan of 
God must not be disappointed when he finds 
himself outside of God's plan for his happiness 
and welfare. 

There are no safety deposit vaults for God's 



158 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

gifts to man. When times of financial panic 
come, frightened and panic-smitten men with- 
draw their currency from circulation, store it 
away in a vault, thus hastening the national 
disaster. Panics come when men refuse to 
invest. In an hour like the present, when moral 
forces are facing a panic, when organized forces 
for evil are using every possible unprincipled 
means and method to press righteousness to the 
wall, no man has any right whatever to with- 
draw and hide his talent. Every lover of truth, 
every believer in immortality, should give the 
best he has, every faculty and talent, the widest 
possible circulation. Invest, and invest heavily, 
is the order from on high. Invest in order to 
restore confidence to the people of God. Let 
them feel encouragement by seeing that the very 
best you have is at the disposal of all mankind. 
Refusing to do so makes one a miser deserving 
of nothing save the curse of man. Upon the 
wholeness of the mvestment depends one's 
destiny on the Day of Judgment. To the one 
who, by investment, has increased his talent, 
God says: "Well done, good and faithful 
servant, enter into joy." To the one who refuses 
to make investment of his life, he says: "Take 
away that which he hath." The Judgment 
hinges on the problem of investment. 

That we make not fatal mistake let us remem- 



THE INVESTMENT OF A LIFE 159 

ber that no talent is properly invested unless 
done so with a reverent purpose. Talents may 
be invested aimlessly and without results. To 
bring paying dividends the investment must be 
backed by a life having a noble purpose. To 
illustrate, if you were compelled to sum up your 
entire life in one sentence, what would you be 
able to say of yourself.^ What one predominant 
characteristic do you recognize as being the 
index of your life.^ You reply, "I am a student.'* 
Is that all you can say? You have invested 
brains, are an educated man, but is that all.'* 
Unless you have applied your intellect to 
successfully solving some problem for those who, 
denied your blessings, are ignorant and super- 
stitious, your knowledge is valueless and will be 
buried with you. You may be a toiler, but unless 
you have tugged away and lifted, with all your 
might, at the world's burdens, your strength will 
go with you to the grave. If your investment of 
the aesthetic does not make the world more 
beautiful, it is valueless. Are you successful in 
business.^ Is that all that can be said.^^ You 
may be worth many millions of dollars, but if 
your gold has never gleamed in true philan- 
thropy it will crumble into dust with your body. 
You may be ^ood, but unless your goodness 
expresses itsdi in sacrificial service, it is worth- 
less. 



160 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

That which is enduring demands, not the 
investment of talents alone, but the investment 
of the whole life. To give your talents indif- 
ferently marks you, not as an investor, but as a 
spender, and anyone can spend money, espe- 
cially inherited money. To make an investment 
demands a whole life centered upon one holy 
and noble purpose, for which one spares neither 
toil nor sacrifice, energy nor time, until the 
united efforts become permanent in the world 
and forever identify your name with that noble 
purpose. To invest wisely is to endow one's 
name until it stands out the rich embodiment of 
some worthy purpose, as the name "Dante" 
stands for poetry, the name "Abraham Lincoln" 
stands for the emancipation of the slaves, the 
name "Garibaldi" stands for liberty, the names 
of Peabody and Shaftesbury stand for benevo- 
lence, and the names of Wesley and Moody 
stand for the redemption of a world. 



XXIII 

THOUGHT PLANTING 

There is nothing more common, and seem- 
ingly insignificant, than the planting of a garden. 
There are the simple upturning of the sod, the 
mellowing of the soil, and the burial of a hard- 
shelled seed. Let a chemist analyze the soil, and 
a scientist examine the seed, and they will be 
unable to find anything signifying relationship 
between the two. There is nothing, so far as the 
human eye can see, to suggest that the combina- 
tion of seed and soil would be other than the 
combination of stone and stubble. But when 
once planted all the universe knows about the 
little brown seed. The earth and the seed were 
made for each other, and no sooner do they 
come in proper contact than the whole universe 
is set in motion about and for the development 
of that buried germ. There is not a cloud float- 
ing afar nor a star gleaming mildly in the distant 
blue that does not exist for that tiny seed until, 
through the ministration of sunbeam and moon- 
light, shower and baptismal dew, the seed arises, 
clothed in the glory of a resurrection, to lift 
itself in right royal grandeur above the clod. 

161 



162 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

No one can explain how the inanimate can 
thus become living tissue, but the sun keeps 
warming its leaves with caresses, and the kindly 
winds bring tribute from distant lands; and the 
guarding stars keep sending their benign forces, 
and the cool hand of the darkness offers its 
chalice of dew, so that the seed becomes a tree, 
whose nectar attracts the bees and butterflies, 
and whose wide-extending branches become the 
home and playground of the birds. 

There is nothing seemingly more insignificant 
than the planting of a garden unless it be the 
beginning of a good and useful life. It is simply 
planting a thought in an ordinary human brain. 
The wise philosopher may examine the thought 
and pronounce it quite commonplace; the gram- 
marian may test it and say that it could be 
constructed in a more exact and polished 
manner; the physiologist may examine the brain 
and pronounce the texture of its convolutions as 
being most ordinary. There is nothing anywhere 
to indicate that the combination of that par- 
ticular thought and that particular brain could 
result in anything particularly extraordinary. 
The possessor of the brain may feel no different 
after the planting of the thought and have no 
presentiment of what it shall mean to him in the 
years that follow. But the whole universe knows 
about the thought planting. As the stars remem- 



THOUGHT PLANTING 163 

ber the buried seed, so all the divine forces of 
earth and heaven are set to work about the 
planted thought. Days and weeks may pass 
without the world observing any appreciable 
results, and it may even forget the planting. 
But God has not forgotten. He is remembering 
it, guarding it with divine care, and the results 
will appear sooner than we think. 

That is the reason, I believe, that Christ took 
the mustard seed for the foundation of a parable. 
The seed is not only one of the smallest, being so 
little that it can slip unnoticed from your grasp, 
and hide within the crevice of a clod, mocking 
your solicitous search, but it is of most rapid 
growth. Within a fortnight it will overshadow 
the garden, and before the season is ended will 
tower twelve to fifteen feet in height, its sturdy 
branches affording shelter, and protected nests, 
for many birds. Divine thoughts within the 
brain are capable of this marvelous develop- 
ment. The planting may be an unattractive 
thing to do; the mind itself may be as unre- 
sponsive as the soil at the first planting of the 
seed, but God has not forgotten his truth, and 
all the universe is working for its fullest develop- 
ment. Soon, very soon, will it manifest its 
marvelous nature by rapid growth and bloom. 

Here is a little lass, living among the forests of 
Domremy. Day by day she watches the soldiers 



164 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

of hostile powers tramping along the dusty 
highways to devastate the land she loves so 
dearly. Her heart aches as she sees her people 
languishing helplessly under the heavy yoke of 
oppression. Standing with tear-filled eyes one 
day she hears an old man say: "God will one 
day raise a deliverer for the French." Amid the 
dust arising from the tramping of an invading 
army a thought was planted in the mind of a 
child. 

Here is a little girl at Ledbury, near the 
Malvern Hills, sitting in her father's dooryard, 
looking at the mysterious letters of a Greek 
book, whose secrets refuse to yield themselves 
to her inquisitive brain. Disappointed, she 
buries her face in her book and weeps, only to 
be found by a kind friend who picks her up and 
whispers in her ear: "There, do not cry. A little 
girl can learn Greek if she tries." The world 
goes along as usual, not knowing that a new 
thought has been planted, and that girls may 
learn Greek as readily as do the boys. 

Here is a little boy, standing by a harpsichord, 
watching his father's fingers find the notes upon 
the ivory keyboard. His soul is filled with 
delight as he listens to the melodies that arise. 
Beholding the nervous twitch of the tiny fingers 
longing to earnestly and reverently touch the 
music-making keys, the father bends low. 



THOUGHT PLANTING 165 

and says: "Be patient, son, and keep loving 
your music, for some day you will be a great 
musician." 

Here is a little boy drawing with charcoal 
upon the w^hite walls of his mother's kitchen, 
while a precious old grandmother sits watching 
the young artist. Taking him in her arms, she 
said, "Do not paint to rub out, paint for 
eternity." Commonplace words uttered in a 
commonplace home by a very commonplace old 
lady. 

Here is a bright-eyed little boy kneeling at his 
mother's side to say his prayers. Having finished 
his petitions, the Christian mother says, en- 
couragingly, as she strokes his head, "Only be 
good, my precious boy, and God will use you to 
help the thousands." 

We have seen these five persons putting 
ordinary thoughts in what seem to be ordinary 
brains. These five children felt no enraptured 
thrill, the ones who sowed the thoughts did not 
remember the day. But all the universe of 
spiritual power knew about the planting, and 
consequently the seeds grew. Watch the little 
girl among the forests of Domremy, leaning 
against the trees, buried in thought, and listen- 
ing to the voices that ever speak of redeeming 
France. Watch the little girl bending over her 
Greek book, day after day, finding the key that 



166 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

unlocks the beauty of Homer and Thucydides. 
Watch the little lad sitting past the midnight 
hour, his long curls falling in rich folds about 
his face as he bends over the harpsichord 
awakening the slumbering strings. Watch the 
little lad gathering clays of various colors and 
grinding them into paint, which shall, at the 
touch of his brush, awaken angels upon the 
canvas. Watch the little lad who learned to 
pray at his mother's knee, gathering the 
students of Oxford about him to spend the 
evening hour in prayer. God has not forgotten 
the good thoughts sown in the days gone by, and 
all the spiritual forces of the heavens are work- 
ing for their most complete development. Soon 
the little lass of Domremy, obedient to the call 
of the voices, mounts her charger and compels 
King Charles, the invader, to flee and give back 
the government of France to her people. Soon 
the little girl who studied so diligently to learn 
Greek will become Mrs. Elizabeth Browning, to 
make the centuries happy with the music of her 
poems. Soon the little lad at the harpsichord 
will become the mighty Mozart, whose music 
lingers like the sweet fragrance of dew-wet 
flowers. Soon will the little boy, drawing with 
charcoal, begin to paint for eternity, and the 
"Angelus" and "The Man with a Hoe" begm 
their deathless career, as a tribute to toil, and 



THOUGHT PLANTING 167 

an eternal protest against oppression. Soon the 
boy of Epworth and the youth of Oxford will 
become John Wesley, the leader of the great 
revival which swept England at a critical period 
and directed her on the right track. 

No one can understand the mystery of the 
growing seed, or the greater mystery of the 
growing thought, but each individual can have 
such a love for childhood and its future that he 
will guard with jealous care each word that 
leaves his lip, determined that in the sowing 
nothing but good seed shall find lodgment in 
any heart. An evil thought planted in a child's 
mind grows into a ruined life and blasted 
character. Let not even the idle word be an evil 
one for fear of the harvest. What an incentive to 
become good husbandmen planting righteous 
thoughts in the minds of childhood, looking 
forward to harvests that shall never end! 



XXIV 
THE ROSARY OF TEARS 

God meant man to be happy. The sweetest 
music of this world is clear, ringing laughter. 
Beside its resonance the majestic voice of the 
cataract, the rolling melody of dashing billows, 
the gurgling ripple of the sim-kissed streams, the 
thrilling throb of the wild bird's song, the merry 
chirp of the cheerful cricket, the lyric of the 
wind-tossed leaves are as nothing. Better one 
sudden, spontaneous outburst of childish 
laughter than all the symphonies and oratorios 
of the long centuries. Nothing can equal it. It 
comes with the spontaneity of a geyser, rolls 
out upon the atmosphere like a volley of salutes, 
thrills like martial music, its quick vibrations 
making the sunbeams tinkle like silver bells. 
It is contagious, causing the facial muscles of our 
friends to relax and begin to run and leap into 
the radiant smiles, their vocal cords to 
burst into song, and the whole world becomes a 
better and happier place for all mankind. 

As the sunshine makes battle with shadows, 
so men and women should wage warfare with 
everything that depresses. Children have a right 

168 



THE ROSARY OF TEARS 169 

to laugh, and youth has a right to rejoice in the 
morning light of Hfe that floods the pathway 
with the bright and brilliant colorings of hope. 
We must not be too exacting with others, 
neither must we endeavor to abnormally repress 
our own feelings. There is a restraint that is 
not culture and a self-control that is not tem- 
perance. Some people would be far more honest 
in their dealings, and have better rating in their 
own community, if they did not exercise such 
an exacting self-control over their deep feelings 
of honesty, justice, and brotherly love. There is 
a boundless strength in emotion, therefore 
laughter and happiness are absolutely essential. 
Let happy hours be golden beads, which, strung 
upon the silken cord of memory, will become a 
rosary with which to count our prayers. 

Laughter is essential, because of its relation- 
ship to tears. In the truest sense pure tears and 
pure laughter are one. It requires a raindrop to 
reveal the hidden beauties of the sunbeam. Be- 
holding the rainbow spreading its many-colored 
folds over the dark shoulders of the storm cloud, 
we utter exclamations of gladsome surprise. 
How marvelously beautiful it is ! But every sun- 
beam would be a rainbow if only it had its 
raindrop through which to pass. It requires 
vapor to reveal the hidden depths and treasures 
of the sunbeam. Tears are to laughter what 



170 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

raindrops are to sunshine. They reveal the 
deeper meaning of our joys. Without them we 
should never appreciate or understand the 
brighter moments. When we count each hour 
of happiness as a golden bead, we must consider 
each teardrop as a crystal or polished diamond, 
to gleam upon the rosary of the heart. 

Sincerely pity the man who has lost the art 
of shedding tears, for he has, through self- 
control, restricted his emotions, so as to exclude 
life's best experiences. Without a tear-moistened 
eye one cannot clearly comprehend the bright- 
ness of the sky, the majesty of the sea, the 
commanding splendor of the mountains, or the 
wealth of gold that lies buried in every human 
heart. Without tears one can never experience 
the rapturous joy of truest love or holiest 
patriotism. The greatness of the soul is meas- 
ured by the depth of its emotions, and the extent 
of influence is determined by the readiness with 
which one permits the deep emotions to shed 
their glory. 

Herein is hidden a secret of triumphant power. 
The greatest victories are won, not by gun and 
cannon, but by deep emotions expressed in tear- 
dimmed eyes. Great achievements are wrought 
by men who can feel keenly and deeply. Behold 
Garibaldi conquering a great Italian city. A 
thousand soldiers, armed with rifles, and sup- 



THE ROSARY OF TEARS 171 

ported with heavy artillery, stood ready to 
oppose him. Commanding generals, with drawn 
swords, stood ready to give command to fire the 
moment he made his appearance. This was the 
day that he had announced that he would take 
the city. Hours passed and neither he nor his 
army came in sight. Finally, in the afternoon, 
amid a cloud of dust, a carriage is seen rapidly 
nearing the city. Every eye is strained to see 
its passenger, when lo, above the dust, rises the 
stalwart form of the great Italian. Without gun, 
sword, or protecting soldier, the great general 
who has come to take the city, is standing erect 
in an open carriage, his arms folded in peace. 
Each defending soldier is ready to obey com- 
mand, but no command is given. In the presence 
of such remarkable courage each oflScer is 
motionless and speechless. No moment of 
Italian history was more tense. Suddenly some 
sympathizer shouted, "Viva la Garibaldi!" and 
in an instant every weapon is dropped and 
Garibaldi takes the city and holds it as his own. 
The power to advance in the face of great odds, 
with no weapon save a burning heart and tear- 
filled eyes, has wrought more victories than 
we know. 

To cry is not weakness, for tears are evidences 
of strong character. We have always loved 
Mark Twain, enjoying his travels as much as he. 



172 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

and laughing away dreary hours with his 
bubbling humor. But humor never revealed the 
true man he really was. It was not until his 
daughter died, and he sat all alone at home on 
Christmas day, amid the unopened gifts, and 
broken hopes of life, and wrote the matchless 
story of her death, that the world caught glimpse 
of the real Mark Twain. Beholding her lying 
there so quietly, he said : "Would I call her back 
to life if I could do it.^^ I would not. If a word 
would do, I would beg for strength to withhold 
the word. And I would have the strength; I am 
sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt, and 
my life is a bitterness, but I am content; for she 
has been enriched with the most precious of all 
gifts — that gift which makes all other gifts 
mean and poor — death." It required the tear- 
drop to reveal the real character of Mark Twain. 
While for our friends we would have nothing 
but golden hours, for ourselves the rosary of 
tears is the most precious treasure we possess. 
None other creates such a spirit of devotion, 
none other so thoroughly prepares us for con- 
quest; none other opens the heart to those 
diviner emotions which should thrill the inner 
life of all. The golden beads will become tire- 
some, but the crystal rosary of tears will always 
be attractive. Count over its beads. There are 
the large, fast-falling tears of childhood. Tell 



THE ROSARY OF TEARS 173 

them one by one, and behold how they bring 
back the holy memories and yearnings for child- 
hood purity and childhood faith. Hold fast 
those blessed beads that were once kissed away 
by a mother's lips, but still sparkle in the light 
of her precious love. There too are the glittering 
tears of youthful ambitions, when the heart 
burned with passion, the brain whirled with plans 
for conquest, and the eyes were moist with tears 
of hope. How precious those tears that have 
long since ceased to flow! But they are not lost. 
We still have them on our rosary when we offer 
prayer, and the touching of them revives our old- 
time hopes. There also are the tears of love. 
The busy, all-consuming fires of worldly ambi- 
tion cannot dry them alway. They gleam in the 
eye every time memory presents the portrait of 
that precious face. How wonderful to love 
until the eyes blind with tears of ecstasy! 

There too are the priceless tears of sympathy. 
The sight of another's wrong or sorrow unloosed 
the fountains of the deep, and your heart re- 
sponded. In order to right the wrong you gave 
yourseK to work of reform, and made your 
influence a powerful factor in the remaking of 
the world. There, gleaming more beautiful than 
all, are the tears of sorrow. They were shed at 
the side of the grave; they came into the eye at 
the sight of an empty chair. How unbearable 



174 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

the world until relief came in a flood of tears! 
Only through tears do we find the sweetest 
comfort. 

Thus, our devotions become more helpful 
when we hold this rosary of priceless treasure. 
These beads can be purchased of no merchant; 
they cannot be blessed by any priest. They were 
wrought in the fires of our suffering, and, be- 
cause we trusted him, they were blessed of God. 
They cannot heal the soul — only God can do 
that; but they help heal the soul by quickening 
our memories and reviving our past experiences. 
Let no one rob you of the beneficent influences 
of deep feelings, whether of joy or sorrow, for we 
are never so much in the spirit of prayer as when 
we hold in our hands the rosary of tears. 



XXV 

THE HEARTHSTONE OF THE HEART 

Speaking to a young man who was about to 
assume the more weighty responsibilities of re- 
ligious work and living, Paul bade him stir up 
the coals of genius, and build a fire of enthusiasm 
that would warm and set aglow with holy zeal 
his every endeavor. *T put thee in remembrance 
that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in 
thee." As the housewife stirs the living coals 
out of the dead ashes of the old fireplace, and 
fans them until they glow with sparkling fervor, 
setting aflame the newly placed faggots, making 
the room radiant with good cheer as shadows 
dance along the walls and ice melts from the 
frost-screened windowpanes, so out of the dead 
ashes of past enthusiasm he was to stir up the 
living coals of his best gifts until they snapped, 
and sparkled, and burst aflame, filling the heart 
with brightness, and creating an atmosphere 
that would melt the ices of indifference from the 
windows of his soul, and give him a clear vision 
of a great wide world. Yea, as in the days of 
Paul, one would take a dying torch, and placing 
it to his lips, pour out his breath upon it until 

175 



176 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

it burst in flame, that he might have a torch of 
burning fire to guide his footsteps through the 
darkness of the starless midnight or to flash a 
message to the people living upon the distant 
hilltop, or to kindle the fireplace wood until the 
cold corners of the house breathed a hearty 
welcome to the tired and frozen travelers, so the 
young man was to take the divine elements of 
the soul, breathe upon them the breath of prayer 
and devotion, until they blazed and burned and 
cast abroad their helpful influence. 

Within each human heart, however covered 
with the smothering ashes of sin, are God-made 
sparks of celestial fire that long to rise on wings 
of flame and make heroic battle with oppressive 
darkness. There are too many lives which, 
through carelessness, never burn bright, but, 
like smoldering flax, slowly eat themselves away, 
darkening and corrupting the very air they 
should illumine. When they began the Chris- 
tian life they were radiant with hope, beaming 
with enthusiasm, and flashing with chivalric 
courage; but the spirit of worldliness choked 
and smothered them, until now, like the dead 
hearthstone of some shell-torn house upon the 
battle line, they offer to a worn-out world no 
hope of hospitality. To guard against this 
choking of the soul, this smoldering of genius, 
this reckless burning out of the priceless gifts of 



HEARTHSTONE OF THE HEART 177 

God, Paul urges all young men to stir up these 
coals and fan them into radiant and glowing 
character. 

It is not the will of God that any life be 
formal and indifferent. How much all forms of 
life, plant, and animal owe to the hidden fires 
within the bosom of the planet, no scientist has 
been bold enough to state; but this we know 
about mankind, without the inner fires of burn- 
ing thought and all-consuming zeal there is no 
productivity. And no life need be cold-hearted. 
For the hearthstone of every heart there are 
three divine qualities that should burn with all 
the intensity and fervor as in the hearts of 
ancient seer and prophet. 

There is the quality of Faith that makes God 
real. To many people God seems so far away 
that it is an impossibility for him to be a very 
important factor in their daily lives. He is a 
sort of good-natured Generality, to whom they 
may address petitions of greater or less degree 
of piety, without fear of being embarrassed 
by an answer. Should it be announced with 
certainty that at a given time the accumu- 
lated prayers of a twelvemonth would be 
answered, fifty per cent of the people would be 
afraid to face the hour. Some have prayed for 
purity of heart, but if there is anything in the 
world that they do not want, it is purity of 



178 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

heart. Nothing would be more embarrassing to 
carry into their haunts of enjoyment and more 
difficult to explain to their companions. Others 
have prayed for God to accept them as living 
sacrifices, yet sainthood, to them, is as shocking 
as yellow fever. I once knew a man who prayed 
"Let justice rule supreme." It is a pleasing 
phrase and a consummation to be devoutly 
wished for, but had it been answered in this 
particular case, the man who uttered the prayer 
would have gone to the penitentiary. Few 
people deny the existence of a God, but many 
live as though there were no God. But these are 
not the real lives. The men who really live and 
give a homelike feeling to the world are those 
who have stirred up the embers of their faith 
until they burn with an all-consuming warmth 
that makes God a guest of honor. To such souls 
God is marvelously real, and they rejoice to 
have him dwell within. When faith once lays 
hold on the Almighty no other experience is half 
so real. One needs read about it in no book, 
consult no priest or preacher, nor plead with 
friend to lend the information, for he knows it 
for himself. Sitting beside the hearthstone of a 
living, flaming faith, our hands feeling the 
pressure of that mighty Hand that never harms 
but always serves, our souls rejoice with un- 
measured joy to realize that we are in the 



HEARTHSTONE OF THE HEART 179 

presence of God who knows and understands, 
and who not only walks the weary ways with 
us, but gladly dwells within. 

There is the quality of hope that makes 
heaven real. So long as hope burns within the 
heart there is no fear of winter winds, but when 
hope dies the soul dies. How gladly may old 
age look over the world in which it spent the 
four-seasoned life of toil! Here is the spring of 
life where the daisies grew and the cowslips 
scattered gold about the feet. Yonder the 
harvest fields of manhood's power in which a 
bared arm of strength gathered the treasures of 
the soil while right merry thoughts centered 
upon a nearby cottage toward which he knelt 
each time he tied a band of gold about the 
garnered sheaf. Yonder the carefully planted 
violets grow upon a tiny mound, bright children 
of the sun making battle with the cold shadows 
of a marble slab. Now the autumn time of life 
fades into wintry quiet. The song of the brook 
is hushed beneath ever-thickening ice, the trees 
are robbed of color, the fields are trackless wastes 
of snow. The four seasons of life are growing 
to a close, the last afternoon is coming to its 
twilight, and yet one is not sad. The fires of 
hope still burn upon the hearthstone of the 
heart, and fill the soul with the light of its im- 
mortal home. Heaven is not a far-away land. 



180 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

vague with mystery, and dim with distance, but 
a place that is real and very close. We breathe 
its scented air, and bathe in its golden light 
while hope is burning divinely bright within our 
hearts. 

The hope of heaven does more tnan offer us 
compensation for the wrongs of life; it gives 
man an intelligent interpretation of the things 
of time. Until one believes his citizenship is in 
heaven he cannot intelligently perform his daily 
task. The painting that lacks perspective is a 
daub; the hopeless life is dismal failure. There- 
fore, as one prizes the best, he should stir up the 
gift of hope until heaven is as real as home. 

There is the quality of love that makes the 
world seem real. At the fireside of a loving 
heart, one readily learns the true secrets of the 
world in which he dwells. There is nothing so 
potent as love to give vision to the soul, clear- 
ness to the eye, effective service to the hand. 
Then stir up the gifts of love. Build in your 
heart the fires of a quenchless affection that 
refuses to believe the worst, that will never give 
consent that anyone has gone too far in sin for 
reclamation, but ever believes that one more 
touch of kindness will bring the person back to 
God; a love that gladly sacrifices everything of 
value in his effort to redeem that which has no 
value; a love that knows no selfish interest and 



HEARTHSTONE OF THE HEART 181 

daily seeks the welfare of another. Then will 
the world cease to be hazy and fantastic, but 
will be as real as the ones of your own household, 
who gather each evening hour about your fire- 
side. 

Let not your love for one single individual die; 
it robs you of too great a joy. Warm up your 
hearts by allowing the fires of faith in God, hope 
of heaven, and love for all men to blaze and 
burn in high, exultant flames that know not 
how to die. Without it your life will be as 
barren as the deserted house through which the 
winter winds pass undisturbed. Make your life 
homelike by keeping bright the hearthstone of 
the heart. 



XXVI 
THE UNOARED SEA 

Each one spends his childhood playing upon 
the golden sands of an unoared sea, over which 
in the after years he must find his way to ship- 
wreck or safe harbor. 

How little does childhood in its helplessness 
know of life! Pleased with simple things, it 
greets the world with gladness, and shouts for 
very joy when finding a tinted shell or bit of 
seaweed. With spades of tin it undertakes to 
dig a hole "clear through the earth," and smiles 
in contemplation of a vision of the Chinese sky. 
With chains of sand it undertakes to bind the 
rushing waters of the tide which granite cliff and 
flinty rock cannot subdue. The child under- 
takes great things while he himself is not strong 
enough to withstand the smallest wave, but, 
leaving his unfinished task, runs homeward at 
the coming of the tide. The waves roar with 
laughter and the spray sparkles with merriment 
as they destroy the feeble efforts of his puny 
hands. Childhood knows little of the unoared 
sea of life whose marvelous power of wave and 

182 



THE UNOARED SEA 183 

tide threatens to destroy all the childish and 
manly efforts of his life. 

The desires of the sea may be fulfilled. With 
youthful enthusiasm and unguarded courage he 
may make fatal venture and be lost. There are 
many such of wholesome soul and worthy pur- 
pose whose most cherished hopes and plans 
came to shipwreck and disaster. The seas of life 
are strewn with wreckage. Yet one must not 
be pessimistic and forget that the raging sea is 
not onmipotent. With all its wild dashing 
waves and boisterous winds it is not as strong 
as that little lad may become. The weakest 
child may yet be able to dig a pit large and deep 
enough to bury all the swollen waves; and 
build a cable of sand strong enough to bind 
securely the rising and the falling tides. Some 
day, over the calm and quiet waters of a per- 
fectly conquered sea, this tiny lad may pass into 
the harbor of safety and success. 

Man was not made for the sea, but the sea 
was made for man. Man was created with the 
gift of complete dominion over all the world in 
which he finds himself. Standing like a dis- 
coverer upon the shores of his own unoared sea 
of life, it is his to conquer, for each individual 
faces a sea newly created, whose waves have 
never been cut by the prow of any boat. No 
two people sail the same sea. Each person faces 



184 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

a life as original as it is unknown, but one that 
is singularly suited to himself. Age may be 
enriched with much dearly bought and valuable 
experiences, and be most helpful in counseling 
youth, but age can never fully understand the 
child, or youth, who stands upon the sun-kissed 
sands of the unoared sea of his own individual 
life. The beauty and pathos of life is that each 
one must solve the problem for himself. 

This does not mean that the training and 
counseling of youth should be neglected. The 
ennobling influences of a godly home with 
Christian parents; the steady, guiding hand of 
school and college; the inspiration of good books 
and imperial thinking, as well as the soul- 
strengthening forces of the church, are all of 
most vital importance. They should never be 
omitted from any life. These are things to which 
each child has an unquestioned right. All the 
forces for good, of earth and sea and sky, must 
be centered upon the ambitious but ofttimes 
thoughtless youth, that he may recognize and 
faithfully employ the agencies created for his 
service and success. 

The best that education can do is to help the 
individual to help himself. Education is not a 
compass by which to steer his craft; it is not the 
rudder that determines the course; neither is it 
the propelling power that drives it through the 



THE UNOARED SEA 185 

waves against an adverse wind. God has made 
especial provision for these equipments. The 
chart is the inspired Word; the compass, a 
divinely guided conscience; the rudder, a will 
surrendered fully to the will of God; while the 
power that propels lies in the skillful using of 
two plain oars that God has placed within his 
easy reach. Education is the intellectual train- 
ing that enables him to use these agencies in the 
most efficient manner. 

Many centuries of experience and experiment 
have produced no labor-saving machinery for 
reaching the harbor of success. If one would 
make successful voyage, he must be willing to 
grasp the oars with his own hands, bend his 
back to heavy strain, employing all his mental, 
physical, and spiritual power to the task of 
making good. It is not a joy ride or a pleasure 
trip. There is a joy unspeakable in the task, but 
it comes not from without but from the con- 
sciousness within that one is winning in a moral 
strife. This consciousness will be found to be 
the chief est of life's joys. None shall excel it 
this side the welcome we shall receive when 
safely anchored in the presence of our God, and 
even then this consciousness will be the inspira- 
tion of the heavenly song. Life must be con- 
sidered not so much a pleasure as a struggle, 
but a worthy struggle, that sends the blood 



186 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

tingling through the veins, and builds the tissues 
of a noble character. 

After the training in life's fundamentals the 
choosing of the oars is the most important thing. 
The craft in which one sails is character, built 
to weather any storm on any wind-swept sea. 
The haven is God's homeland of the soul. The 
oars are varied, and the success or failure of the 
voyage, the safety or shipwreck of character, 
a victorious landing or sinking beneath the 
waves of obscurity, depend entirely upon the 
choosing of these oars by means of which his 
life energies are to be directed. 

To this end all the educational influences of 
home and school and college must be directed. 
Youth must be taught the value of an intelligent 
choice of the instruments through which his 
powers shall flow. He must not be led by fancy 
or prejudice or by the words of dishonest men 
who have oars to sell. He must not choose by 
the color of the paint or beauty of their decora- 
tions. He must not listen to the honeyed words 
of an evil one whose sole purpose is his destruc- 
tion. Leaving the sands of childhood and 
starting voyage upon the unoared sea of life is 
a moment in which all earth and heaven are 
concerned, and therefore the choice of oar must 
not be left to chance or fortune. He must know 
that all the proffered oars are not alike, and 



THE UNOARED SEA 187 

that false teachers profit from the wreckage of 
the boats they set adrift. He must know that a 
broken oar means a drifting boat, and that no 
drifting boat can ride a storm-tossed sea. All 
the difference between heaven and hell is in 
that moment of decision when he picks up his 
chosen oars and begins to use them as his own. 

There are two oars that never fail when once 
grasped by a hand that is firm and true. The 
first oar is called Virtue. With this oar of moral 
excellency, of pure heart and clean hands, with 
this oar of real integrity of character and purity 
of soul, man's energies are never wasted as he 
makes battle against opposing powers. The real 
sinfulness of impurity is its resultant waste of 
strength. Behold the wan faces, sunken eyes, 
wasted energies, emaciated forms, staggering 
steps of weakness, and the uncertainty and in- 
decision of character, and one sees the conse- 
quences of abusing the laws of purity. But 
virtue means more than purity of body, it means 
absolute cleanliness of heart and mind and 
purpose. 

The second oar is Righteousness. Unright- 
eousness is the abuse and waste of power. The 
New Testament word for sin is "missing the 
mark," energy that is wasted by not being care- 
fully and accurately directed. To be upright in 
life, free from wrong and injustice, to yield to 



188 UNFINISHED RAINBOWS 

everyone his just dues, is to have a means for 
directing strength and vital energy that never 
fails to bring the desired result. 

Two oars — "Virtue," Tightness with God; 
"Righteousness," rightness with man — two oars 
that have never been known to break no matter 
how much a great soul bends them in his battle 
with the waves. Two oars that have never yet 
failed to bring the ship to harbor. 

This, then, is the opportunity of the church, 
not to manufacture oars, but to aid youth and 
maiden to choose the ones that God hath made. 
They are not new inventions, but as old as God 
and rugged as the Hand that made them. 
Firmly grasped and resolutely employed, the 
harbor is made in safety, although the voyage 
be upon a hitherto unoared sea. 



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